


Exercises in Futility

by migratorycat



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-07-11 17:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/migratorycat/pseuds/migratorycat
Summary: Spoilers for Shadowbringers MSQ! After Y'shtola's rescue from the Lifestream, Warrior of Light finds herself confronted by Emet-Selch in her chambers about a curiosity that he sensed in her while he was about his task. But their brief discussion quickly turns into much more than either of them could have predicted.





	1. A Pleasant Exchange

**Author's Note:**

> Renamed from "Attractive Acts of Kindness."

I was in my room in the Pendants, dressed in loose wool for sleeping and listening to the gathering storm outside, wishing I had something to distract me from my predicament and all these new revelations. Emet-Selch’s words echoed endlessly in my mind. And the look in his eye when he had recognized those murals - and again when he turned away from us and asked, _Wouldn’t you wish for the same?_ haunted me, deeply. 

Would I wish for the same, in his situation? I was forced to ask myself this as I played that scene over and over in my head... and I wondered at my answer.

The unique sound not unlike billowing smoke and churning air that suddenly filled my chambers briefly caught me by surprise, and a moment later the subject of my thoughts himself stepped out from the portal of writhing darkness that had appeared near the door and vanished once he was through. I raised my eyebrow at Emet-Selch in question at his presence. I was keenly aware that my sleeping clothes were not the thickest cloth, but I would not let him shake me; I stood up from my seat on the bed.

There was already a smug plotter’s grin on his face. “Greetings, O vaunted Warrior of Light,” said he. “Getting some rest, I presume? It’s no less than what you deserve, given your recent exploits.”

He didn’t appear to be goading me, despite his tone ever carrying a tinge of taunting. I decided to take him at face value. “I was about to. Would you mind telling me why you teleported directly to my chambers, instead of knocking on the door from outside like a proper gentleman?”

His smile twitched. “I didn’t want to deal with the possibility that you might slam the door in my face.”

“...Fair.” I folded my arms. “What is it you want?”

The Ascian lowered his eyes in consideration. He put his hands behind his back and paced a few steps closer to me. The smile on his face was mysterious, like he was privy to something special and amusing that I wasn’t, and the longer he was silent, the more I found myself wishing he would either reveal the mystery or come close enough for me to wipe the grin away by force.

At length he spoke in a voice just slightly more taunting than before. “I wish only to discuss with you something _peculiar_ that I experienced during our time in the Rak’tika Greatwood, while I was fishing your friend from the Lifestream.”

My eyes widened in spite of my desire to be stoic, and I felt the blood draining from my face. He continued. “You see, as I extracted her, I sensed part of you behind me. And, my, what a _strange_ feeling it was.”

_Y’shtola, her nakedness bathed in and obscured by light, floated above Emet-Selch’s pointed finger. I watched in awe, my heart thudding away, and as he lowered his hand, I felt something in me stir deeply, flooding me with warmth. I drank in the image of him standing there at his full height rather than his customary slouch. As I looked on, barely breathing, he lifted his hand and snapped again - a sound which sent a shock through my body - and by his grace the problem of her nakedness was solved immediately with the sudden appearance of her previous attire. It was the good faith of the thing that reached in and took hold of me. When she gently floated to the ground, I was tingling in every part of my body as we rushed over to her._

Yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

And he didn’t seem to want to torture me with it, make it a game; he came right out and named it. “You admired me,” he declared. “ _Viscerally_.”

For a moment I thought I should deny it, appear indignant, throw him out. The words and raised voice caught in my throat. But I knew that he could sense, then and now, what was happening with my body; there was no denying the small panic he had elicited. I would look like a fool if I did.

Besides, did I _want_ to lie to him?

I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed. “Yes,” I admitted. Then continued unprompted, “I tend to find myself attracted to people possessed of great power who do good things with it.”

When I looked back at Emet-Selch, I found him with an expression of genuine surprise on his face. It was almost endearing despite the person projecting it.

“I didn’t expect that you would be honest,” he said. He was silent for a moment, his countenance shifting to a contemplative pout, and then he folded his arms, mirroring me. "How interesting."

I stopped grinding my teeth. "Do you intend to lord it over me, then?"

"Lord it over you? No." He dropped his arms to his sides and let his eyes wander the course of my chambers. "I was simply curious. Believe it or not, curiosity is in my nature. After so long…" He stopped himself, shook his head, and shrugged. "Well. I had to know."

I felt almost queasy with shame and embarrassment. As if news of my god and my possibly impending Light-sickness wasn't enough, now my enemy - my cautiously kept ally - knew that he had roused me. Regardless of what he said, I couldn't picture him doing anything with this information other than tormenting me. 

"That fire," he said suddenly, his voice quiet. "I would be curious to see it kindled."

It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. Even then, I couldn't be sure. Even so, a flower of heat blossomed in my stomach and dropped - as he'd put it - _viscerally_. He looked at me. His yellow eyes were nearly unreadable. I knew he could sense what had happened.

" _Well_ ," he murmured with interest.

My face thickened with heat as he stepped closer. He was still a fair distance away, but he might as well have been a tower looming over me. I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn't summon words that would make any difference.

"Is that something you wish of me, then?" He drew closer still. "To _kindle_ your _fire_?" There was barely the hint of a smile on his lips, so faint that it might have been merely a matter of habit.

Then he was upon me. He leaned forward until I could not escape his gaze. "Or are you merely so desperate that you'd take anyone, even an evil Ascian to bed?"

My temper flared brilliantly. "Let me assure you that my standards are not nearly so low as that," I growled, causing him to straighten and back off. He stared at me with one eyebrow raised at my sudden ferocity, and more.

Little by little, my face relaxed from its snarl. I began to think about this peculiar situation, what it meant, what I wanted. What did I want? I should have been in turmoil, my insides ablaze with conflict. Instead I was fairly calm, albeit flustered. How strange it was that I was calm. It was like I was rising to the occasion for another battle. It felt exactly the same as that. In the moment before a decisive challenge, I always felt calm.

Because I knew what I wanted.

I took a deep breath that served to steady myself and prepare my next words. Then, in an even voice, I spoke again. 

"Curiosity… is also in my nature,” I said.

Emet-Selch’s eyes widened. His lips curled into a smile. “Ah! Very, very interesting. You wish it sated, then, as I do mine?”

“If you can manage it without strings or schemes attached.” I gave him a hard look. He responded by leaning forward slightly again, putting a hand over his heart.

“Oh, I am _always_ scheming. But if you’ll accept a nugget of truth - nothing less than anything else I’ve given you so far, mind you - I did not come here planning to proposition you. You’ve surprised me again, you see. You seem to have a tendency to disrupt even my smallest plans. It’s annoying.”

With a graceful movement he lifted his right hand’s fingertips to his lips, then took his glove in his teeth and pulled it away, and repeated the gesture for his left. The gloves went sailing together over his shoulder, flicked away by a casual flourish. I stared at him, awestruck in spite of myself.

He reached out and hooked a finger under my chin, tilting my head upward. “Very well,” he said, then kissed me.

The very concept of his lips pressing against mine floored me to stillness. I could barely respond except to gape in shock, which allowed him the space to employ his tongue, which shocked me still further. After a few moments of this he drew away to regard me with a reproachful frown.

“If this is your best effort, I must say, you do not impress.”

I sputtered a few syllables of nonsense. “I didn’t - I wasn’t expecting you to -”

Somehow his look grew even more offended. “What, did you think I was going to throw you down on the bed and take what I wanted without a thought? I’m not a monster.” He planted his hands on his hips. “I’ll have you know that in previous mortal lives I was known as a _kind_ and _caring_ lover.”

I gawked. “I don’t believe you.”

He glared at me viciously, to the point that I thought I could almost sense real rage in his eyes. I took the opportunity to reach forward and pull his lips back to mine. Or mayhap he was the one who returned to me, eager to prove my doubts wrong; either way, I was ready this time, and soon I was lost in the rhythm of the thing, the touches, the feeling. He did kiss like a lover, tenderly and with conviction, and I responded in kind. At one point I reached around and threaded my fingers into his hair, and he made a quiet sound that I couldn’t parse for meaning. I felt his hand on my forearm, and the other on the small of my back - and then I realized that I was naked, my clothes having impossibly slipped from my body via his will of Ascian magic.

I felt one of his hands come to rest on my shoulder, then tentatively pass over my breast as it traveled downward, rotating until his fingers led the way. Heat flooded me as I realized what he was doing. I inhaled sharply when he searched, then found his mark; soon I welcomed one slender finger inside me, while his thumb stayed on the horizon and began to caress my flesh. My hands clutched at the fur lining of his coat. My breath quickened, and my entire body began to quiver.

The style and cadence of his attentions were uncannily similar to how I would have performed it myself when alone, which increased their effectiveness threefold. Through clouded thoughts I supposed he could somehow sense what it was I liked best. My theory was confirmed when he pulled his lips away from mine and reapplied them to my neck, sending a shudder rocketing through my body. He pulled me close with a hand on my back until I was arched against him. The metal of the medallions adorning his robe stung cold against my breast. His delving fingers coaxed passion out of me in tender strokes until my thighs began to ache and tremble. I was dizzy, tingling inside and out. His tongue ran a raw line under my jaw, wandering...then he sucked my skin with his lips, took it in his teeth, and bit down.

“Ah!” I cried out in shock. Emet-Selch released me, laughing, and gave me a gentle shove that sent me just a short distance backwards before I hit the side of my bed and began to fall. He moved after me; invisible hands caught me, adjusted me until I fell to lay entirely on the bed, and put a pillow under my hips to prop them up. Then he was upon me again. His entire body below the neck was covered in moving darkness, like the shifting shadows that play beneath tree branches swaying in the wind. It was his clothes, bleeding off of him in waterfalls of smoke and blackness. As he moved closer to me it bared his shoulders, then his chest, then all the rest of him, and he appeared to be a man like any other underneath. I don’t know why I felt a twinge of surprise.

Our eyes met as he crawled on top of me and settled himself between my spread legs. I could feel his longing flesh pressed against mine, perched on the precipice. His look was strange; for a moment I thought he might say something, maybe offer a scathing remark in response to my surprise. But he bowed his head and kissed my chest, and I blossomed with heat as he entered me.

He pressed forward with tempting slowness until he filled me as he could - well and plenty - and then he lifted his head again and looked at me. His golden eyes were smoky with want.

“Yes, indeed,” he murmured huskily, “there is a fire inside you…”

I swallowed hard. _Twelve help me._

He began slowly, perhaps taking my measure. I made an effort to relax and savor the feeling of him easing in and out, and soon he adjusted himself, pressing our bodies a little closer together, and I couldn't help a soft moan. He made a quiet sound under his breath in response. He leaned in, and the roll of his hips became a sensual rhythm that played to just the right angle. His breath came hot and light against my neck. I reached up and cupped his cheek with one hand, and he leaned heavily into my touch with a deep sigh.

I lost myself in this, the ebb and flow and build of heat, our bodies entwined. The first height of my pleasure came upon me more quickly than I expected. I didn't attempt to resist it; what would be the point of dragging this on? As I felt the rising warmth inside of me, like footsteps toward a cliff's edge, I panted a dignified whimper of warning. To his credit, Emet-Selch did not speed up his pace with the misdirected, giddy zeal of a man rendered witless by passion. Instead he dutifully maintained his rhythm, and my body's rapture ascended all the higher for it. The pleasure of my orgasm plunged into me. His mouth settled over mine as I cried out.

When it waned, I began to shudder inside with every thrust as my body's heightened sensitivities emerged. My head strained back against the pillow in revelry. Emet-Selch, breathing hard, leaned his head against mine and spoke between breaths into my hair. His voice was full of nostalgia and dripping with lust.

"Back when the world was whole… when my people lay with one another… we shared part of ourselves…" His hand sought mine, and he threaded our fingers together and pinned it gently down on the bed. "Like this."

I didn't understand until I felt it. There was something outside the physical realm, something ethereal, reaching out to me, like a proffered hand extending toward me. Posed with its palm upturned, as if to present something to me, it drew closer and closer. My spirit took a step forward, leaned in, and peered into what it had to offer me.

Immediately I was surrounded by an ocean of sensation. It wrapped around every part of my soul, leaving me with only enough room to breathe. Currents of color and feeling rushed over the limbs of my mind. I could feel every drop of the ocean at once. My heart began to sing with the echoes of the boundlessness that enveloped me; I could feel him. _Him_. Stretched to oblivion. He was a million feelings, a myriad of hopes and hatreds that I could only sense, not interpret. The only things I could identify keenly were the filmy threads of the pleasure and gratification that he was experiencing at that very moment… and the vast, empty loneliness that writhed in the depths underneath, defining a black portion of his soul.

Above me, Emet-Selch's breathing hitched, and his movements grew urgent. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and gaped against my skin. A groan escaped him. I felt his release inside me as he rode it out with frantic abandon.

On that ethereal plane, the hand posed in offering began to quiver. Its fingers stretched fretfully, and quivered too. Suddenly it was not offering, but begging - _please, please, please_ \- and with all my soul I reached out and grasped it.

Emet-Selch gasped.

My ocean crashed against his. In a frothing explosion, they began to churn. My hopes rubbed up against his hopes, my hatreds mingling with his hatreds. Our pleasure, soul deep, clashed in ecstasy.

All at once, it was gone.

I stared at the empty space above me, then turned my head. 

Emet-Selch was out of me, away from me, halfway across the room. He was fully dressed in his emperor's robes again. He stood slightly hunched over, panting, his arms wrapped around himself, looking at me with eyes wild with shock. A bead of sweat trailed down his cheek, from under his eye - or was it a tear? He straightened and turned away; I would never know.

Quietly, so quietly that I wondered if I was meant to hear, he muttered, "I didn't expect you to reach back…"

He was silent for a time. I propped myself up on my elbows and watched him. At length he addressed me, still without facing me.

"Well," he began with a sigh, "that was interesting. And… pleasant." He lifted a hand and snapped. I felt his release inside me simply vanish. Of course; it wouldn't do to have another contender to the Garlean throne running about. He turned his head and regarded me with an unreadable expression. "Until next time, then, Warrior of Light."

I reached out with a hand and began to say something, but he was gone in billowing darkness not a moment later. And then I was alone.

* * *

The sun was out in splendor the next morning. The Crystarium smelled of wet dew and mist, the gifts of recently departed rain. I bathed, dressed, and headed to breakfast, my steps and mood perhaps lighter than they should have been.

I arrived to all of the Scions already partaking of the Exarch's unending hospitality at the Wandering Stairs. As I sat, Thancred eyed me strangely, then his lips twitched at a smile.

"Took someone to bed last night, did you?" he said brazenly.

I blanched. My jaw dropped and I wanted to ask how he knew, but he just smiled and gestured to his own neck, and I understood. My neck, where Emet-Selch had sucked at my skin and bitten me, was surely purpled and resplendent in its proclamation. Alisaie was staring at it with a slight blush on her cheeks. Urianger and Y'shtola raised an eyebrow in similar manners, and Alphinaud appeared to be absorbed in his breakfast. Minfilia looked back and forth between me and Thancred with interest.

"Who was the lucky man who ended up in the Warrior of Light's bed? I'm curious." Thancred folded his arms and waited.

I hadn't thought much about whether I was going to tell everyone about what I'd done, and now I would have to make a choice. I could simply say that it was some nice crafter from the Crystalline Mean, or a guard who had winded his way into my good graces in my time of need. But in the end I decided that keeping the truth from my friends on anything that had to do with Ascians was asking for trouble. I cleared my throat.

"Last night, I slept with Emet-Selch," I said.

Six jaws dropped at once. Alphinaud immediately began to choke on the pastry he had been chewing; Alisaie blushed harder and pounded his back while staring at me. Minfilia had a look of pure innocent shock on her face, while Urianger and Y'shtola exchanged looks and stared at me. Thancred sat up from his leisurely lean and glared daggers at me. "You did _what_?" 

I flashed them all with a guilty smile.

"Why in the hells would you do that?" Thancred went on, and I could only shrug.

"Have you lost your head to the Light?" Alisaie asked. "Are you feeling alright? Did he harm you?" 

"No, yes, and no," I responded.

After a moment, Y'shtola spoke up. There was a troubled look of vague disgust on her face. "If this was some sort of… reward for retrieving me from the Lifestream…"

"No!" I cried immediately. "No, no, no - it was nothing like that at all. I promise."

A silence fell over the group.

"And thou art certain that he did no harm aside from thy mark?" Urianger asked at length. I nodded. "Then I am sure thou were not without thy reasons. But if thou wouldst permit - I wish to look upon it no longer."

"I can understand that," I admitted. I stood up and leaned over the table so that he could stretch out his hand and, with a green glow of healing, erase the bruise from my skin.

"I'm shocked the bastard's not around to offer his damned commentary," Thancred remarked dryly.

When I sat back down, Alphinaud had largely recovered from his accident. He took the opportunity to ask, "Did you, by chance, learn anything about him from the encounter?"

 _Sure. I learned that he's a kind and caring lover._ I cleared my throat again. "Nothing terribly useful. But there were a few things…" I thought of his loneliness that I had sensed, and of his lecture at the murals, and connected the two. But that had been something deeply personal to him; I wasn't ready to reveal it to the group just yet. "Well, time will tell."

"It will," said Y'shtola, "though I pray it will not be too late in the telling."

We settled down to breakfast and the subject was not broached again.


	2. Feeling the Depths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emet-Selch's statements regarding life on the fragmented worlds trouble the Warrior of Light after the party's discussion in the Ocular. Again she is confronted by him in her chambers, though to what end she can only guess.

I stormed into my room in the Pendants and let the doors clatter shut behind me as I threw off my coat. There was sweet-smelling tea waiting for me on the table. We would be leaving soon, but I had time for this; I went to it and poured myself half a cup, then took a swig that did not dignify the type of careful sip that such a drink called for. I sighed and pinched my brow between my thumb and forefinger, and sat heavily on the seat before the table. The greenish liquid sloshed in the cup.

_Case in point, I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you._

Gods, I had slept with that. I had let a creature with that callous philosophy into my body and had given him pleasure. And worst of all, I had not stopped thinking about that night, and even now with the shame and conflict churning in my gut, I knew I would not mind it happening again.

Why? What had gotten into me? I yearned for an answer that would satisfy me and settle everything to rightness. I knew such an answer did not exist.

There was a knock on the door. I glared its way, contemplating how deeply I did not desire visitors or distractions, but in the end I just sighed and set the teacup down on the table. I stood with great reluctance and made my way to the door, then pried it open. Before me, to my surprise, stood Emet-Selch, who smiled at me with the barest hint of friendliness.

"There," he declared, "I have knocked on your door from the outside, like a proper gentleman."

I scowled. "What do you want?" 

"I desire the pleasure of your company," he said. He leaned forward in what was almost a bow, and gestured plaintively with a white-gloved hand. "Will you indulge me?"

 _The pleasure of my company?_ My heart took a small leap and my stomach was angry about it. Every part of me warred with every other part of me for a moment until we all came to the consensus that it was fine, we better not turn him away, he might have more information to reveal. I huffed a sigh and stepped aside, opening the door wider. His smile grew as he entered.

He strode halfway into the room and turned to face me as I shut the door behind him. I closed my eyes so as to not meet his gaze; looking only away as I moved, I went to the tea on the table and poured a second cup, then handed it to him. He received it awkwardly, his smile melting away to intrigue.

"What is this?" he asked.

"Do you not recognize tea?" I rejoined, perhaps more harshly than was warranted.

He raised an eyebrow and gave it a dainty sip, then lowered it and gazed into the middle distance in consideration. "Hm," was his remark, a sound tinged with polite approval, before he set it down. "You are a gracious host," he praised.

"What do you want?" I asked again.

"And I rescind that compliment. Did I not _just_ say-"

"I know what you said. I don't believe it."

"So suspicious!" He frowned. "I wish only to have a quick chat with you. Really, that's all."

I spoke quickly, without thinking. "The last time you came in here wanting a 'quick chat,' we ended up-" I stopped myself there, unwilling to put the words out in the air. 

Emet-Selch's gaze dropped, and he smiled softly. "Yes." 

I looked at the gentle expression on his face, and it occurred to me that he was recalling our encounter with fondness. I couldn't decide how to feel about that. My face, heedless of my inner conflict, heated.

He looked at me. In his eyes was a glint of mischief. "Is that really so bad?" he asked.

 _No_ , was my immediate response, though I dared not speak it aloud, especially since I didn't completely agree with it. I folded my arms and looked away.

"Was my performance so underwhelming that you wish to forget it?" he went on. I could hear the taunt in his voice. Some sick part of me couldn't let it go unanswered, lest my silence be misinterpreted.

"You know very well that it was fine," I muttered.

He laughed. "Hah! ‘ _Fine’_ ! Oh, yes - as I induced your cries of ecstasy, I was merely _adequate_."

"Enough," I snarled. "Did you come here to taunt me?"

He stopped laughing and cleared his throat, his look losing its humor. "No. As I said before, I came only to talk. You see? You derail and disrupt everything I plan. You have such an interesting pull of influence."

"We're talking now," I pointed out with venom. "Get to the point, then."

Emet-Selch turned away from me to face the open window. He reached over to the table and picked up the tea I had poured for him again, inspiring in me an irrational pang of indignation that he would dare partake of my hospitality at this point.

He took a drink, then asked, "Do the things I said in the Ocular trouble you?"

I stared at his back in vicious awe. My hands began to quake at my sides under the weight of the question's boundless absurdity. "Does it trouble me?" I echoed in disbelief. Anger bubbled to the surface. "Of _course_ it troubles me! You advocate for the genocide of millions, of entire worlds!"

"Of lesser beings, frail fragments of what once was, so that my people may live again."

"Why do your people deserve to live more than mine?"

"We were the ones who made the sacrifice."

"Great!" I threw up my arms. "How noble! We're all grateful. But they made their choice. They're in the past now. They live on through you and yours. What about the life today? Can you not find any value in it? Just because we're less powerful than your kind once was?"

Emet-Selch turned to face me again and set the tea on the table with a clatter. He wore a scowl on his face. "The only reason there _is_ life today is _because_ my people made that sacrifice."

"Like I said, we're grateful."

" _Y_ _ou_ are grateful; the world at large is ignorant of ancient history."

"Because - yes, I know, our lives are short and ephemeral and wholly inferior - it is ancient history. It's the past. Your people are gone and this is the way things are now."

"Ah, but it doesn't have to be. When our plans come to fruition, we will have our world back, and every life that was once upon it."

I ground my teeth and fell to a brief silence. "Is this the only way?" I asked eventually. "Is the only way to bring your people back through a path of genocide?" 

"To bring them back and restore the world to its former glory, a great sacrifice is no less than what Zodiark requires."

My stomach churned again at hearing it put so bluntly. "I forget that you're tempered," I said.

He smiled cruelly.

In vain, I rephrased an earlier question. I knew the futility of it as soon as it left my mouth. "What's wrong with the way the world is now?"

The Ascian sighed sufferingly and glared. "It is _lesser_."

I echoed his sigh. "We're going in circles."

A silence descended upon the room. I thought and thought, trying to come up with an argument that might strike a point that he had not considered before, even as I warred with myself over knowing that he was ancient and had had centuries of certainty in his goals.

"I've seen a primal try to resurrect the dead before," I tried. "It produced a husk, an empty echo of what once was. How do you know that Zodiark won't give you the same?"

"Zodiark was created with the strength to rewrite the laws of existence," Emet-Selch replied without hesitation. "You have no idea what He is capable of."

Silence again.

I would never be able to convince him. There was no way to turn him away from his aims. Knowing this deeply now, the fact settled in my gut like a jagged rock. I don't know why it pained me so. We were enemies, opposed by our very natures; I would do well to remember this. And yet, I remembered suddenly, he wanted to ally with me, based on certain tenuous Light-based conditions. Why?

 _Long have I awaited one who might brave a path of lesser tragedy. A resilient soul able to endure the necessary pain,_ he'd said in the Ocular. But what did that mean? I wanted to ask, but I knew he wouldn't tell me.

"I sympathize with you," I said instead, my voice heavy. "Really, I do. I know what it's like to have lost. But-"

Emet-Selch's face twisted with anger. He took a menacing step toward me, and I somehow fought the reflex to take a step back.

"You think your losses compare to mine?" he demanded piercingly. "You think you can conceive of even a fraction of my pain?"

He got right up in my face. I glared at him defiantly, unblinking. "I can imagine," I said.

"You cannot," he growled.

"I can try to understand-"

"You cannot!" He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and when he opened them, I could sense burning rage flaring behind them. "But you-" There was a spark of inspiration in his eye. He grabbed my hands suddenly. "You can _feel_." His grip was so tight as to be painful; I grimaced under the weight of this and his imposing gaze.

"Feel me," he intoned.

On a different plane I sensed again the proffered hand, except it was not posed in offering this time; it shoved forward, so close that I could not avoid it, and something took my mind's eye and yanked it downward so that I was forced to peer within. I plunged into the tempest that was him, falling through the layer of anger and deep, deep into the depths, into the black pit that was the loneliness I had sensed before. Darkness closed around my soul. My spirit could not breathe. The hollowness of despair unending stole the thoughts from my mind and pierced my heart, bleeding me dry of all feeling except for an echo of that selfsame hollowness, until I was consumed with anguish and the pain therein.

 _Know me_ , Emet-Selch's voice boomed in my mind, _know my suffering._

I was on my knees before him, my arms lifted above my head and my hands still grasped in his. Tears streamed steadily down my face. I wept soundlessly. My eyes stared sightlessly. My lungs began to ache for want of air, but I couldn't summon the strength to inhale under the weight of the emptiness that crushed me. I looked up; Emet-Selch gazed down at me without pity.

 _There is no comparison_ , he spoke into my mind.

Somehow, I breathed in. _It's all… relative_ , I managed to think. His eyebrow twitched.

It was true that I had never experienced the loss of my entire world and all my friends and loved ones. I felt his despair and wondered at its age, its interminable depth. But had I not also felt despair? Had I not losses of loved ones and anguish for them?

Just as I had done before, I reached out and grasped the ethereal hand reaching out to me.

Our despairs collided, churned, and began to mix. I shoved forth my sadness for my lost friends. I threw in my heart's pangs for the friends who had lost, themselves. I-

Gone.

Emet-Selch extricated his hands from my grasp and retreated a few steps, shaking them as if to shake off water. He scowled, his eyes wide with shock. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

I pushed myself to my feet, the remnants of his pain slowly fading away.

"We're sentient, like you, like your people were - were they not? We're capable of hopes and dreams and despair, too." I reached up to scrub the tears from my face. "Why can't you accept that our lives have value?"

Emet-Selch scoffed. "Your life, perhaps. Not others."

"Why mine?" 

He shook his head. When he looked at me again, he was back to his normal haughty expression and infuriating grin. "Well, this has been enlightening."

I recognized that he was trying to close a conversation that I was nowhere near done with. "Wait!" I demanded.

"Back to work, hero. You have a lot to prepare for." He was gone in a burst of darkness.

I cursed aloud.

Silence descended upon my chambers in the wake of my expletives, digging oppressively into my ears. I sighed yet again and sat back down at the table, and poured myself some more tea.

What had been the point of that? Had he really just come to my chambers to continue a moral debate with me? Why did he care?

I sipped as was proper.

We were both immovable, that much was clear. I would never sway him, and he would never sway me. Try as I might, I could not divine a reason for anything that had just occurred. It was all bottled up in his head, and a mystery to me. Perhaps it would remain so.

The prospect upset me, which forced me to admit to myself that I wished I knew him better.

And I couldn't produce the why of that, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part mainly bridges the first and the third together. Part 3 is already in progress. Thank you for reading!


	3. Joining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mt. Gulg Talos operation is underway, and the Warrior of Light decides to get some rest. Of course, Emet-Selch makes himself a part of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the person who left a comment on the previous chapter asking if there would be more sex: I see you. I was already ten steps ahead of you. Enjoy, fellow thirster.

During the first day of the frenzied preparations to seize Mt. Gulg in the hands of a giant Talos, I was largely useless.

After Emet-Selch badgered me by waxing nostalgia and planted several troubling thoughts in my head, Ardbert - that steadfast friend - appeared to offer me his two gil.

He warned me against making a decision that left me alone.

And I was reminded of the gaping maw of loneliness in the Ascian's heart, and felt a harsh pang of sympathy for him. He had not made the decision that had left him alone. Or, perhaps, by taking the stance that he did, he had. It was hard to say. A complicated issue.

Upon Ardbert's departure I threw myself headfirst into the labor of my party's staggering undertaking.

Or, at least, I tried.

I joined the amateur miners in the crags, Tomran pickaxe in hand, but there were too many people who were already sufficiently coordinated, and there was no room for me in those narrow passages and sheer cliffs. I summoned my mount from the aether and escaped the rocky peaks to search for something else to help with. 

I tried carrying supplies to and fro and distributing them, but my sudden addition to the workflow disrupted the carefully organized system that had already been put in place. Amidst the general confusion, I snuck off to try my luck elsewhere.

I encountered a stalwart Eulmoran making repairs to the upper parts of the Ladder. When I asked if he needed assistance, he bade me count his remaining screws. Yet even this task I could not perform; the number dropped from my head as Emet-Selch's words echoed in my mind over and over again, and I wondered at our conversation. When asked for my progress, I looked up sheepishly. And so I was sternly, yet politely, ushered away from this as well.

I took tea with Dulia-Chai, who had taken on the function of joyfully shouting encouragement in her sing-song voice to whoever was nearby.

"Perhaps you should take this time to get some rest, dear!" she suggested cordially. "Goodness knows you have your trials ahead of you. The work is only just beginning. Go on, take care of yourself!" 

Her words inspired me, and, feeling like indulging myself, I realized that I wanted a godsdamned _bath_. Not a quick soak-and-scrub, mind; I wanted to melt myself in hot water and immerse my skin in splendid smells. So I bade her farewell and teleported to the Source.

Specifically, to the Black Shroud. I made sure not to be seen; I was sure that news of my disappearance was widespread, and I didn't want to show my hand to my Eorzean enemies any sooner than I had to. Moving carefully, I snuck into the forest and sought out sprigs of lavender, then gathered them up and spirited myself back to the Crystarium. There I took advantage of the supplies and facilities in the Crystalline Mean to create my prized concoction.

And so I arrived in the basement of the Pendants wrapped up in nothing but a fluffy robe and bearing towels, a bar of sweet-smelling soap, and a full glass vial. A heated pool had been reserved for me alone. The room was warmly colored and dimly lit by wall lanterns, and the bath was a wide, inviting circular basin set into the floor. I stripped with a flourish of the robe, then uncorked the vial with my thumb and upended it over the water. A moment later the surface flashed with violet light, and sweet lavender scents began to waft upward and fill my nose. I smiled to myself and slipped gingerly into the bath, settling down for a long soak in its warmth. My eyes immediately began to drift shut.

"Shouldn't you be assisting at Mt. Gulg?" asked a sultry voice, and of course my eyes snapped open. I flailed in surprise and my arms flew to cover my breasts.

"Oh, no need to be shy," said Emet-Selch, standing at the rim of the basin with folded arms and leering down at me. "I've already seen all your body has to offer."

I glared. "Leave me alone. I'm trying to relax."

"What, not going to demand to know why I'm here?"

"I don't care why you're here."

"Well, I am curious - why is the Warrior of Darkness bathing and idle when she should be working hard to reach the final Lightwarden and slay him?"

"My comrades have everything well in hand. My presence was unnecessary." I gestured dismissively. "I decided to take a while to rest while the operation carries on. So now I'm here, trying to relax, which I can't do while you're standing over me."

Emet-Selch didn't move. He was looking at my body. I struggled to read his expression beyond the cryptic smile on his lips.

I huffed. "If you're intent on shadowing me, then wait for me in my chambers. I don't have the willpower to deal with you right now."

To my surprise, he looked me in the eye, then dipped low in a deferential bow and vanished in shadow. I gaped at the spot where he had stood, astonished that he had complied. So he would be waiting for me, then.

I resolved to keep him waiting as long as I liked.

I leaned back again and took a deep breath; for some reason, my heart was beating at a gallop. Twisting and searching for the bar of soap I had placed in the saucer nearby, I set to scrubbing myself clean. I had meant to relax, but my movements were jerky and forced, and I scoured my skin until it was blushing red. Twice over I washed every ilm. I leaned back with a weary sigh once I finished. No longer occupied by a task, my thoughts raced and fretted, and despite the comforting heat and soothing lavender scents, I couldn't unclench my muscles and rest. I spent several minutes staring at the wall, until my body could no longer endure it, and I spasmed with flailing limbs in a fit of frustration and finally climbed out of the water and employed the towels I'd brought.

When I returned to my chambers garbed in my robe again, I found Emet-Selch leaning against the wall near the window, his eyes wandering the sky outside. He turned his head to look at me, smiling strangely. I ignored him and went to the casual clothes that I'd laid out on the bed for my return. I let the robe drop without shame. He was right, after all; he'd seen everything there was to see, so why should I be embarrassed? I began to dress as if he wasn't even there.

Emet-Selch sighed. "I-"

I cut him off. "You know what the worst thing about your plan is?" I asked as I pulled the cotton shirt over my head. I let the question linger but did not give him the opportunity to answer. "I would love to be part of it - if it did not involve the sacrifice of millions of people. If not for that, I would aid you in a heartbeat." I paused to pull on my underwear and pants. "But it does, and I find myself very opposed to the destruction of all the life the world has to offer. I value it, while you and your fellows do not. And so I will oppose you to the last."

I finally turned to face him, and a rush of confusion filled me at the sight of the astonished look on his face. His eyes were wide and his lips were slightly parted in a gape. I didn't understand; what about what I said had been at all surprising? He pushed off the wall and began to walk toward me.

"Those words…" he murmured with wonder. His usual hint of a mocking smile was gone. "That was almost _word-for-word_ … but…" He reached me and, gallingly, gently took my face by the chin and tilted it, leaning in to peer intently into my eyes. Even more gallingly, I started to blush deeply at the intimate touch and his closeness.

His eyes widened further. "That color… could it be?"

"What color? What are you talking about?" Annoyingly, my voice trembled.

His expression changed, taking on a look of tenderness and pain that confused me all the further, and he let go of my chin and cupped my cheek in his hand. Heat rushed down the length of my body. "It can't be," he whispered.

"Start making sense this instant," I demanded. My heart had begun to race again.

Emet-Selch closed his eyes. His thumb caressed my skin. Haltingly, my hand came to rest upon his, and I couldn't bring myself to grip it and pull it away. He looked at me, and the emotion whirling in his golden eyes tightened my chest.

"Lie with me again," he said. I gaped at the brazen advance, so sudden and unsupported by the circumstances.

"What? Why?"

He drew closer, until the hem of his robe tickled my shins and I could feel his breath stir the air between us.

"I would know you once more," he replied. "I see something in you, something that I must confirm. I need to know you the way you have known me twice now."

I recalled the tempest of emotions that he had presented to me, and how I had reciprocated only to have him withdraw suddenly both times. "I've tried to let you in, and you fled me."

"You caught me by surprise. I was unprepared." His eyes darted away. "I'm ready now."

"And why do we have to have sex while we do this? You didn't seem to think it necessary last time."

He scowled, seeming annoyed. "Because it's _intimate_ ," he said. Then his irritation seemed to drain out of him, and he came closer. His eyes, half-lidded and avoiding my gaze, were full of longing. His other hand settled on my hip. "Because I desire you," he went on, voice low. "Because I want to feel your pleasure while I know you, body and soul." 

He slipped his fingers under the waistband of my pants and let his gloved hand linger on my skin. The churning warmth of arousal bloomed inside me. I swallowed, unable to find words.

Emet-Selch bent his head forward and placed his cheek near mine. "I shall indulge your every whim, if you wish it," he said under his breath, and pressed his lips gently against my face. My hand found the center of his chest and pushed for balance against my inner whirling as he kissed my skin with tenderness I could barely fathom. Eventually I turned my head and captured his lips with mine, my principles forgotten once more, and we began in earnest.

"I had hoped you wouldn't say no," Emet-Selch breathed in a ragged voice, and he seized the hem of my shirt and heaved it up over my head as I lifted my arms to assist. He discarded it on the floor, and I found that I didn't care. His hand flew to my breast and caressed me. He nuzzled my jaw with his lips.

I took the fur trimmings of his jacket and began to lift it from his shoulders, but he barked a laugh and batted my hands away. "Please," he said, "do you have any idea how many servants and steps it used to take to build this ensemble each morning? Better to simply be rid of it all with but a thought." Before I could blink his clothes began to slide off of him in rivers of shadow until he stood naked before me. I took the opportunity to admire his body; I hadn't had the chance before. He was surprisingly well-muscled, a trait that his robes concealed. My eyes lingered on his toned chest and broad shoulders.

"Like what you see, do you?" he asked with a smug grin. "Do you always oogle people like this?" 

I raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm sorry - would you rather we turned off the lights and closed our eyes for good measure?" I retorted.

He replied by kissing me with force, shoving the waistband of my pants past my hips until pants and underwear both puddled at my feet. We parted and he stepped around me, taking my hand, and sat on the bed, guiding me until I came to straddle his lap. He wrapped his arms around me and embraced me with full tenderness.

I longed to take him in. I shifted my hips, intending to make it so, but he held me in place, saying, "Wait."

He leaned back just far enough to look me in the eye. A myriad of passions swirled behind his intense gaze. "Now, offer yourself to me."

I knew what he meant, but… "How?"

He frowned, thinking. "How do I explain it, except to tell you to do what I did? This should come naturally to one of my -" He stopped suddenly. "Just - do as you did before, when we joined."

Nervous, I nodded, then closed my eyes to concentrate. I tried to picture a hand reaching out, _away_ from me, and then I poured my will into this image, trusting in instinct and intent more than anything else.

I opened my eyes. Emet-Selch gazed through me with a strangely conflicted look on his face. "Yes, like that," he said. "Well, then…" I felt him reach out.

The instant I felt his soul touch mine, he inhaled deeply, his fingers tightening on my back. Then we flowed together as before, and a great shudder ran through him. I felt our feelings mingle. Thin electric currents of nervousness and anticipation ran through me, and I couldn't discern to which of us they belonged. He squeezed me in his embrace almost to the point of pain. He had leaned his face against my shoulder, and I couldn't see his expression.

"Now…" he murmured, and the coursing rivers of my spirit surged and flowed over him. He immersed himself in me, and I observed with interest as he explored and took me in. Currents of emotion and pieces of my soul brushed past him, and he caressed them and knew them. I felt him tremble around me. He breathed an awed sigh.

"You are," he whispered, "you _are_ …"

Relief, joy, sorrow, and a longing so poignant that it caught like pain flowed from his ocean to mine. Confusingly, I even detected sparks of _love_ flitting about his heart. He tried to kiss me, but I pulled back. "I am what?"

For a moment he did not answer. His expression was unreadable, but with our connection he was laid bare before me; I could feel that he was debating how much to reveal, if anything. I hoped he could feel my frustration in response.

"If I told you, you would break," he said eventually. "And I need you whole for what is to come." He laid his hand on my cheek. "I have placed all my hopes in you."

I reeled inside from wondering what he could possibly mean. I opened my mouth to ask, but he shifted his hand to place a finger over my lips.

"Do yourself a favor," he said. "Don't think about it. Tomorrow you can worry and fret all you like, but today, relax. Enjoy what I have to offer you."

That finger had a pacifying effect on me. I had reared up, combative, but I settled down again, and his erection brushed between my legs. His look became hungry and intense, and I felt his passion flare alongside mine in our souls. I shifted my hips once more, and he reached down with a guiding hand until I was settling upon him, and then I took him in and he exhaled with the pleasure of meeting flesh.

I felt that pleasure viscerally. I felt it inside myself, filled with him; I felt it within him, filling me; and I felt him feeling _my_ soul's pleasure, reflected back at me. All this became a whirlwind, the infinity of two mirrors turned to face one another, the reflection bouncing back and forth forever until the resulting image overwhelmed beyond comprehension. I whimpered and trembled under the crush of this sudden ecstasy. It was beyond anything I had ever felt before. I writhed against his body, determined to feel more.

"Yes… it's exquisite, isn't it?" Emet-Selch held me in support of my desperate squirming. He seemed to enjoy it. "It's been a long, long time… ah…"

He groaned in pleasure and laid back on the bed, granting me greater purchase. My writhing became a back-and-forth rhythm, sliding across his lap and taking him deep inside me. I planted my hands on his chest, already panting. Emet-Selch draped one of his hands over mine and gripped my thigh with the other. Within moments his grip tightened, and he threw his head back against the bed and let out a moan that made my heart skip a beat. I felt his pleasure surge and coalesce, and he came inside me with a deep shudder.

I slowed my pace to almost nothing and stared at him. "Really?"

He took a few deep breaths, during which I felt his hardness begin to lessen, then he looked at me with a sly grin. "Come, now, do you really think I'd leave you wanting?" He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers, and I felt his leavings inside me vanish just as they had before, with the additional bonus of his erection abruptly renewing its vigor.

"This body does whatever I tell it to," he said gloatingly. He heaved me sideways, and suddenly I was on my back and he above me, having somehow completed the transition without ever parting us. He looked down at me with a haughty, confident gaze that I found wildly attractive given the circumstances. He leaned in close.

"I can go all night," he intoned, "and for days after."

When I had recovered from the flood of warmth his words sent running through me, I said, "Prove it."

He kissed me roughly with a giddy growl. I threw my arms around his shoulders and my legs around his waist, and he drove into me with careful abandon.

Soon I was overwhelmed by the reflections of pleasure battering me as inside I flared hotter and hotter. My orgasm crushed me under its incredible weight, and I could barely cry out; I moaned pitifully, and Emet-Selch murmured gentle encouragement against my skin as I trembled and endured the wonderful fury. Hot satisfaction tumbled out of him across our connection.

When I was done, he suddenly pulled out of me and gripped my waist. A dozen shadowy hands appeared to assist him, and I was seized by all at various points across my body, and together they lifted me up and suspended me with my back pressed against the wall, pinning my arms above me. Two of them bent my hips forward and went under me to support me. Another two spread my legs just so, then began to caress my inner thighs, and another slipped fingers inside me to touch and tease.

"Emet-Selch," I called breathlessly, wanting him anew. The Ascian smiled at me. For a few moments he simply stared at me, letting his conjured hands do their work. The hand that was teasing me slipped out and floated up to my face. It tipped forward and smeared my fluids across my lips, and vanished. Then Emet-Selch leaned in to where it had been, and pursued its path with his tongue, sweeping once across my mouth, licking it all away.

He had suspended me in the air so that our hips met at the perfect height. He entered me again and started over. At one point he leaned in and bared his teeth against my neck, and I realized he was going to mark me again with a bite, so I begged between gasps and groans of pleasure, "Please, don't." He stopped, kissed my skin instead, and chuckled deeply. Amusement flitted across the waters.

He attended me until I came a second time, writhing in midair. I turned my head until my face pressed against the cold wall and cried out in ecstasy. Emet-Selch held my shuddering legs and bent to kiss my knee. There were tears in my eyes from the intensity of it, with our souls joined. With a small note of surprise he moaned and came as well, and he rode the high until we both descended into a standstill.

Slowly I came to the realization that I was clinging to him, and he was holding me. The shadowy hands carried me away from the wall and fully into his arms, and he slipped out of me. He stroked my back with one hand.

I let my legs fall from around his waist. My feet hit the ground with a shock that reverberated through me. The conjured hands vanished one by one, and when my body suddenly found itself without support, I sank quickly to the floor. Emet-Selch followed me, kneeling.

"Do you wish to rest?" he asked with a small amount of amusement in his voice.

"I just need a minute," I said, groping my dizzy skull. "I… I don't want to stop."

He snapped again, cleaning me and likely resetting his body. Then he helped me to my feet and guided me back to the bed, where I laid down on my side. He was very careful to be sure that we were always touching and the connection wasn’t broken for even a moment. He laid behind me, and draped one hand over my hip.

"You smell lovely, by the way," he mentioned, speaking into my hair. "What is that? Lavender?" 

"Lavender," I confirmed.

Emet-Selch pressed his nose to the back of my head and inhaled. "Hm."

I tried to take this time to simply breathe. My entire body tingled, and I could sense that I would have been irreversibly spent had we immediately continued on. The Ascian idly ran his fingers up and down my side while he waited. His touch was distracting.

At one point he said, “You should hurry with your recovery. I am not a patient man; I’m liable to get bored and leave.”

I sensed the carefully suppressed desire coursing through him and laughed. “You wouldn’t. You want this.”

To that, surprisingly, he had no reply.

I sobered quickly. He must have sensed the spark of readiness in me; at length he slipped his hand between my legs from behind and nudged my thigh upward, prompting me to lift it cooperatively. The bed rocked as he shifted his body. I arched my back to bend my lower half toward him. He guided himself forward, and I shuddered as he entered me. His arm hooked around me to hold me fast.

This time he was slow and sensual, like a new lover making his first overtures. His breath crashed against the back of my shoulder. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and enjoyed it. At the height, which came slowly, warm bliss washed over me, sweet and secure and comforting. Across our connection I felt his heart swell with a pang of pride, which he quickly stomped down.

I didn't know why he felt so strongly about me, about what we were doing. Drowning as I was in sexual gratification, I wasn't inclined to care.

We continued in this way for hours. Exploring myriad positions and methods, we sensed one another deeply and gave the other their desires, though Emet-Selch took charge often and insisted upon giving me mine. I delved into the depths of his soul and knew his feelings, if not his thoughts. The bitter sea of loneliness and longing in him stilled, temporarily abated. We were always touching, always connected. I wondered what he saw in me.

We stopped only to allow me to take dinner. When the knock came at my door, I pushed myself up and stood, and I let Emet-Selch's hand slip from mine without thinking - and we both gasped as our joining snapped and the recoil struck us like lightning. I fell to my hands and knees and Emet-Selch cried out "No!" in an agonized whimper, then clutched the hand that I had let drop to his chest and groaned like a man who had just stubbed his toe. I reeled, and it took me a few long seconds to regain my senses.

"Gods," I breathed, staring at the floor.

"Yes," he said irritably, "doing that, after _hours_ of being joined. At least provide some warning next time!" 

"Sorry." I had fallen on my discarded shirt. I picked it up and pulled it over my head, tugging it until it covered me adequately, then stood and answered the door. A pale youth handed me a covered tray, bowed, and ran off to his next errand.

I carried it to the table and uncovered it to reveal a selection of lush meats, soft bread, and chopped fruits. My stomach growled to declare its entitlement to a good meal after all the strenuous activity I'd been undertaking.

I glanced back at Emet-Selch. "Do you want anything?" He waved dismissively.

As I ate, I started to feel empty in the center of my chest, like I was missing something. My shoulders gradually drooped, and my posture slumped under the weight of it.

"Ah," Emet-Selch said, "now you feel what it's like to go without."

"Is this feeling because we aren't connected anymore? How do you stand it?"

He paused. "I have had centuries to accustom myself to the loss," he said slowly, his voice grim.

I turned to look at him. He was lying sideways on the bed, facing me with his naked body, his head propped up on his hand. He was as resplendent as a painting. His countenance was similarly contemplative.

I swallowed. "Are you saying that the last time you were… intimate with someone like this was _centuries_ ago?"

He stared into the distance with a dark smile. "An eternity," he said. "I remember it even now. Days before the end of the world."

My heart sank low. Ardbert's voice came to me suddenly; _Don't make a choice that leaves you alone_. I stood up and crossed the room to stop before the bed. The Ascian looked at me strangely, then his eyebrows dipped in a glare, and he sat up on one arm.

"Don't pity me," he demanded.

I had nothing to say in response. I was pitying him. My heart ached on his behalf.

"Don't pity me," he repeated, sitting up further. "Are you done with your mortal sustenance?"

I nodded - and yelped as invisible hands seized me and spun me, carrying me through the air and shoving me roughly down on the bed. Emet-Selch's hands parted my legs, and he retreated to dive face-first between them; his tongue introduced foreign wetness with a caress, and his soul reached for mine at the same time that mine reached for his. Pleasure and the reflected feelings of pleasure exploded between us, and I was helpless.

* * *

I went to the window and pried open the shutters, revealing the glittering night sky beyond and the gentle glow of the Crystarium's lamps below. Cool air floated into the room. It was late, and I was more than spent; my exhaustion seemed bone-deep when I reflected upon it, and I was sore in places had not been sore in a long, long time. After letting a few night breezes in, I quietly shut the window and turned to find Emet-Selch standing nearby. He had been on the bed a moment ago.

Rivers of darkness rippled over his body, starting to form his clothes again. He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. "No."

He raised an eyebrow as I turned aside and yawned. "I'm going to sleep," I said at length. "Don't leave. Stay the night with me."

He was silent long enough that I had time to relocate my sleeping clothes which had been discarded so many hours ago. I pulled them on and regarded him with an expectant look.

Suddenly he smiled and chuckled to himself. "Perhaps I'm developing a sense of whimsy," he said, and the writhing shadow surrounding his body faded away. I smiled back, and together we returned to the bed, settling under the blankets in a comfortable embrace.

I don't know why I wanted to sleep with him. I couldn't express a good reason for anything I had done today; when I tried, the concept slithered out of view, avoiding the thoughts that tried to make it manifest. I didn't want to think about it. I was too pleased to let dread or shame or confusion worm their way into my head just then. So I grew comfortable against him, and slipped quickly into a deep, deep sleep.

* * *

When I woke, Emet-Selch was still there.

I lay on my back, and he lay next to me, one arm slung over my torso. I stared at him for a long time, drinking in the sight of his sleeping face, his expression free of all its usual tension. I had not thought him able to look so peaceful. Unfortunately I spoiled the moment by trying to adjust my position; his brow furrowed, and I knew he was awake, too.

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking - then his gaze locked on my face and they snapped open.

"Hello," I greeted, unconfidently. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came. Sitting up slowly, he peered around the room with slightly narrowed eyes.

"I'm not used to waking up in such a place," he said eventually.

"'Such a place'?" I repeated. "It's a bedroom."

His lips twitched at a smile. "Yes, precisely. The place where I usually sleep is much more comfortable and… dark."

While I pondered that, he turned his gaze down on me, and his look took on an aspect that by now I had grown familiar with. His hand ever so slowly dipped under my shirt and crossed to my hip. My body awoke eagerly in response. He leaned down, and just before our lips met, there was a knock on the door.

Emet-Selch grimaced. Before I could even start to get out of bed he had crossed the threshold and was cracking open the door.

"Go away," he said curtly to whoever was on the other side.

I heard a furtive voice inquire after me, to which Emet-Selch simply repeated, "Go away," and then, "Goodbye," as he shut the door.

I scrambled out of the bed in a huff and came after him. "Wait! What if they needed me for something?" 

"Then they should strive to be more self-sufficient. My needs trump the needs of lesser beings." He stepped toward me with hunger in his eyes. "Now-" 

I pushed past him and opened the door to call after the messenger. I could feel Emet-Selch's angry pout burning a hole in the back of my head. The one who had knocked turned around and jogged back, then delivered the announcement that one of the facet leaders was requesting my presence at the Crystalline Mean.

I glanced back at Emet-Selch. He stood with his arms folded and a scowl on his face. My eyes dropped and saw that he was clearly wanting. I turned back to the messenger.

"Can it wait an hour?" I asked with a blush.

* * *

This time, I didn't interrupt him as he summoned his robes back to his body. Once they were in place, he calmly set about pulling his gloves tight and fussing over the details. Already almost fully dressed, I pulled on my boots while I watched him go through his little ritual.

"Well, this has been fun," he said, turning to me. "Perhaps, once you've slain the final Lightwarden and proven yourself, we might do it again - if you're so inclined."

I smiled. "Why not sooner? They don't need me at Mt. Gulg. I have some free time."

"Your eagerness, pleasing though it is, does you no credit. And I suspect they'll be needing you sooner than you think." He waggled a gloved finger at me, then crossed the space between us and pulled me into a kiss.

He kissed me like it was the last time we would ever do so. I followed suit with enthusiasm.

I was slightly breathless when he pulled away. He turned around and walked at the wall, waving in his limp-handed way. "Back to work, hero," he said, then vanished in shadow.

He left me with a sense of purpose burning in my breast. All I had to do now was prove myself - 

Prove myself. Prove myself to the Ascian who wanted to destroy the world.

Now the doubt and shame had room to creep in. With dawning dread I wondered what was in store for me, what he wanted with me once I had absorbed the last of the Lightwardens' Light. Grim uncertainty clawed its way into my heart.

I stared at the place where he had disappeared and wondered when he would betray me - and whether it could be considered a betrayal at all.


	4. An Interlude With Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warrior of Light returns to Amity.

I arrived in Amity to find it suffused with same industrious fervor as I had left it. Workers bustled and marched to and fro about their business - even the Eulmorans who had come with us, I was surprised to see. I had feared that they might grow idle after their initial burst of enthusiasm, but it blessedly seemed that this hadn't been the case.

Sweet Dulia-Chai finished carrying mugs of tea to a group of laborers resting their feet nearby and then returned to the rickety table where she, Alphinaud, Y'shtola, and Urianger were partaking of the same. I approached with some trepidation.

"Oh, there she is!" cried Dulia-Chai with such honest glee that my heart threatened to melt. "Hello, dear! Come, come sit with us!"

"I believe I shall," I said, smiling warmly and taking my place next to her.

"My husband was sitting there a moment ago, but I just finished encouraging him to start the next step of his plans, so he should be back to work by now." She leaned toward me, eyes gleaming. "Did you rest well, dear?"

I nodded. "Very well, thank you."

Y'shtola's eyes flicked upward from her tea and landed on me with a gaze that made my stomach drop.

"I trust that boredom did not find thee in thy waking hours," Urianger offered. 

"I was not bored at all," I said. A little heat climbed my neck.

Y'shtola's eyes narrowed. She stood suddenly, regarding me sternly, and touched Urianger's shoulder. "Come with me a moment," she said to both of us. As usual, her tone allowed no room for refusal. As I stood up, Alphinaud, who had just begun to pour me tea, protested with a smattering of half-starts and indignant noises.

She led Urianger and I around the side of one building where we would have privacy. She turned to me, her gaze having only grown sterner.

She got right to the point. "I sense his aether in you."

I opened my mouth and no sound came out. Y'shtola held out her hand toward me and closed her eyes to sense me more deeply. "Like oil floating on the surface of water," she said.

Urianger looked between us with momentary confusion. "His aether?" he repeated, then gave a start. "The Ascian? Again?"

"Look at her."

Urianger furrowed his brow, then held out his hand just like Y'shtola. I stood there and endured their examinations teeming with embarrassment.

"I sense no ills," Urianger declared at length, lowering his hand. Y'shtola did the same.

"Nor do I," she agreed, and nodded to him. "Thank you. Suffused with Light as she is, I required a second opinion."

Urianger nodded, then seemed to understand that he was being dismissed. He opened his mouth to speak, but Y'shtola gently preempted him. "I wish to speak with our friend alone."

He considered this, casting a conflicted look my way, but soon he gave a slight bow and set off without another word.

"Come," said Y'shtola to me, and I followed her to a hill that overlooked the cliff that dropped to the lower lands of Kholusia. The wind stirred the feathers on her dress and swept the hem softly against her ankles. I stood beside her and waited.

"Are you well?" she asked eventually.

"I am," I responded.

Though the view beyond the hill was stunning, I cast my eyes to the ground.

"Has he made you promises?" she asked after a pause. "Offered you knowledge? Protection? True assistance?"

My heart ached at her insinuations. "Shtola, I'm sad that you would think that I might offer my body to anyone in trade."

A pained expression crossed her face. She looked at me, regret plain in her milky eyes. "Forgive me. You're right; I should not have implied as such."

Silence settled briefly between us. Y'shtola gazed out into the distance again. "I simply struggle to understand why you would allow that creature close to you in such an intimate capacity on even one occasion, let alone multiple."

"Believe me, I struggle to understand it, myself."

"Do you not worry that you might be bewitched somehow?" 

"I am not bewitched," I said with a short laugh. "Just… fond of him. In some strange sort of way."

There it was; I was fond of him. It was the first time I had been willing or able to even think such a thing.

"Fond…?" Y'shtola said, pondering. "I suppose, were he not who and what he was, he might have his charms." I gaped at her, but she continued in a serious tone before I could address the concession. "But you must be sure to never, ever forget who and what he is. He aims to destroy our world, and every life upon it."

"I know. And I will fight him if it comes to that."

"It will. Mark me, it will. And you know it."

A long silence stretched between us. I debated my next words with a fury, trying to decide how much to tell her. In the end, I decided - perhaps unwisely - that I wanted to be open with her.

"I've known his heart, Shtola," I said softly.

"How can you know this?"

"He shared it with me. We used this… power. It's so hard to describe. It was like… we shared our souls with one another. I felt everything he felt." I lifted my hands and stared down at them, recalling every surge of feeling, every pang, every current. "His despair is so deep. You don't know how lonely he is. His loneliness was so… so…" I let the sentence drop, not knowing how to end it. Y'shtola gazed at me with an unreadable expression.

"Be that as it may," she said firmly, "it is not your duty to soothe any man's loneliness."

I blushed deeply. I did want to soothe it, and I had, and I was proud of having done so. But now I felt like a fool. Of course it wasn't my job to fix him, even had I the means. I was deluding myself to hope that perhaps, with time, I could win him, bring him over to my side… be with him. 

_Again_.

Again? What?

I sighed heavily. Where were these feelings coming from? At times it felt like there was a part of me that I didn't know stepping in and dictating how I behaved.

Y'shtola touched my shoulder soothingly. "You care so deeply for others," she said gently. "It is your strength, how you find the power to defend the ones who need you. You must take care not to misdirect this strength toward those who do not deserve it."

"I understand. You're right, of course."

She smiled at me. "Though, with that said, you're perfectly capable of making your own decisions, and though we might balk at your choice, you can sleep with anyone you like." She gave my shoulder a pat and began to stride back toward Amity. "So long as you are careful about it."

I stared at her back. Had she just given me tentative permission to sleep with an Ascian? It was a moment before I started after her. The scent of tea drifted toward me on the wind.

"I walked in on you two once, actually," said a voice behind me. I turned; Ardbert stood nearby, rubbing the back of his head with one hand and displaying a curiously bashful look. "Yesterday, I mean."

"Oh! Hello," I greeted, and then what he had just said finally registered in my brain. "You _what_?!"

"Aye," he said.

My face warmed. "What did you see?"

The ghostly warrior cleared his throat into his fist. "Ah, well. You were pinned to the wall, and…"

I buried my burning face in my hands. "Oh, gods."

"...I stayed a moment because you said 'Please don't' and I thought you might have been in trouble…"

I turned away. "Oh, _gods_."

"But I left as soon as it was clear that you were, ah, enjoying yourself!"

"Why did you _stay at all_?" I asked him sufferingly, turning back. "What could you have even done to help me?" 

Ardbert spread his arms. "I don't know! Run and gotten help?" 

" _No one can see you_!"

"Well, I could have shouted encouragement while you fought him off, or something!"

"By the _Twelve_ …"

Suddenly, laughter exploded out of me. I bent double, laughing at myself, at Ardbert, at the world. Gods, it was all just so absurd.

"Look, don't blame me for being concerned when I stumble upon the only hope for my world taking someone who helped destroy it to bed." He folded his arms. His words sobered me; when phrased that way, it was perfectly reasonable. I straightened, wiping a tear from my eye.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I don't mean to laugh, it's just… gods." He was right. Y'shtola was right. I had been sleeping with one of the architects of seven calamities. I dragged my hand down my face. "Gods."

"I'm worried about you." Ardbert came close, dropping his voice low as if there were anyone around who could hear him. "Are you alright?"

A heaviness settled on my shoulders that I knew I couldn't shake off. "Worried that I'm going mad?" I grimaced. "I just had this conversation with Y'shtola."

"Yes, well, now you're having it with me."

I frowned at the sparse grass and gravely dirt. "Perhaps I am," I said. "Going mad, I mean. I'm fond of him, Ardbert - perhaps more than fond. I don't know what to do."

Ardbert stepped around to my front and bent down to put his face in the path of my downward gaze. When I looked at him, he straightened.

"I'll tell you what to do," he said confidently. "You find Vauthry, and you kill him. You kill the last Lightwarden, and you save my home."

I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

"Go on," he urged. "They need you." I nodded.

As I started back toward Amity, I called over my shoulder, "Next time, knock! Maybe you can avoid walking in on something."

"I can't touch doors," he rejoined irritably, and I laughed.

When I returned, Alphinaud was alone at the table, still sipping his tea. "Hey, Alphinaud," I said to get his attention. He looked up in the middle of a drink. "I slept with Emet-Selch again."

He spat tea and dribbled what was left into his lap with a shocked cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the title says, this is a brief interlude, again bridging the larger parts together. It's also a little bit of an indulgence on my part, since I wanted another little scene where WoL admits to sleeping with Emet-Selch again! Get ready for feelings next time, because I'm gonna try to bring 'em.


	5. Light-sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst possible outcome has occurred, and G'raha Tia is now Emet-Selch's captive, while the Warrior of Light is poisoned with Light. A day passes in the platry comfort of the Crystarium. That night, the Warrior of Light lies awake, wondering at her fate.

_ I am the Lightwarden, _ I thought, over and over again, as if repeating the facts to myself until semantic satiation took over and each word lost its meaning would make them any less true.  _ I am the Lightwarden. _

I lay in bed, staring across the room through a vignette of white at the closed windows which shone with muted blaze from the sky's everlasting light. The horror invaded me like vines creeping up the walls of an abandoned building.

_ I am the Lightwarden. I am a danger to those around me. _

The image of dear G'raha Tia lying facedown in his own blood flashed before my eyes. I had never once suspected it was him before that moment; the curve of his chin and the shape of his lips had evoked a sense of vague familiarity in me, but I had dismissed it. I had been too busy paying attention to everything else.

To Emet-Selch.

I shuddered under the weight of the heartache. I had known it would happen. Our natures, our goals, were too fundamentally opposed. Grimly I wondered just how long we had been playing into the hands of this master manipulator. Had he always planned this outcome? Had he meant for me to endure this from the very beginning, regardless of what he'd said about his intentions?

_ No, _ I thought with furious certainty.  _ He never lied. He omitted, he obscured, but he never lied. I know this. _

Suddenly the air in the corner of the room churned, and Emet-Selch stepped out of the bloom of shadow, striding toward me. I sat up in alarm. He was upon me in a moment with a snarl. His hand shot out and covered my mouth, shoving me back down to the bed. My heart galloped. I tried to reach up to remove his hand, but discovered that I was paralyzed. I stared up at him as he looked down at me. His face was a twisted mask of fury.

"I trusted in you," he said in a tortured, breathless utterance. "I placed all my faith in you."

His spirit pressed into me, and suddenly I was inundated with his feelings, a furious outpouring of anger and grief and painful disappointment, tempestuous and unrelenting. I was used to us being connected by now, so this didn't hurt me; I let it in, allowed all his anguish to wash over me. Then I gripped him back and made sure that he felt my own grief: regret, fear for myself, and pity for him. I could not speak with his hand sealing my lips, but I didn't need to.

Emet-Selch squeezed his eyes shut and a single tear traced the line of his face.

Ardbert appeared suddenly, his glow bright and angry. "Let her go!" he demanded, drawing his axe.

The Ascian didn't hear him. He opened his eyes, and his expression hardened. "Back to sleep, hero," he said flatly. His hand moved over my eyes, and I had just a moment's chance to feel the sorcery before my body went limp and I sank helplessly into slumber.

* * *

This done, Emet-Selch let his hand slide from her face, and he sat on the bed with a heavy sigh. Ardbert watched him, clutching his axe impotently in his hands and wishing dearly that he could intervene. But after a few moments of the Ascian sitting there and staring down at his friend, he realized that there might not be anything to interfere with. He lowered his axe, confused.

"What to say?" murmured Emet-Selch, placing his hand flat on the bed, near to her arm. "My hope is gone. My duty is all that is left."

Ardbert straightened out of his fighting stance, tucking his axe behind his back. He realized that he was witnessing something important, something that the Warrior of Light would want to know of when she woke, and so he grew silent and still, and tried to commit every word to memory.

"For eons I wondered what had become of you," Emet-Selch continued. "When I discovered who you were, I had hoped that you might remember, that we might be together again. You could forsake those broken husks your present form calls  _ friends _ and help us undo the grand mistake you helped bring about. But now I know…"

He gingerly laid his hand on her face in a caress. "You are broken beyond repair, yourself. Too weak to control the Light. Even if you could be restored, you would still oppose us, still cling to your stubborn ideals." He paused a long time. The silence pressed in on Ardbert like a vise.

"I had hoped to find you and be with you again in a complete world… and now your soul shall be corrupted beyond recognition, never to join us. Perhaps it's for the better. After all, you're finally contributing to the correct path."

Emet-Selch drew his hand down and placed it over her heart in a plainly platonic fashion. When he spoke again, his voice was heavy and pained.

"I'm grateful that I had the chance to love you one last time," he said softly. "Come to me alone as I bade you, and I shall comfort you in your final hours, as you turn and are lost to me forever."

The Ascian stood. Ardbert barely had time to scramble out of the way before he strode by and disappeared into a vortex of shadow.

The former Warrior of Darkness stared after him, then settled down to wait for his friend to wake up.

* * *

I wandered the paths of the Crystarium aimlessly. It had been an hour since I'd awoken from my ensorceled slumber, which had courteously lasted the night and left me feeling uncharacteristically well-rested - one last gift from my enemy, I supposed. The things Ardbert had told me about what Emet-Selch had said and done after he'd cast it still spun around in my head.

"There's one other thing I remember word-for-word," Ardbert had said, and his next recitation had instilled a pervasive confusion that hadn't yet left me.

_ I'm grateful that I had the chance to love you one last time. _

One last time? For eons he'd wondered what had become of me? How could that be? What did that mean? I knew too little to make sense of it. My guesses and suppositions were too outlandish to entertain. If only he would appear to me so that I could ask him, I kept wishing. If only he would answer.

Our strange relationship really did boil down to one longing that could never be satisfied.

_ If only you were on my side. _

I arrived at the Wandering Stairs to find Y'shtola and Ryne eating the last of their breakfast together. Y'shtola cast a withering glare my way - or that's what I thought, until I realized that she was merely squinting. I sat with them, regarding her with concern.

"That radiant, am I?" I asked sadly. Y'shtola closed her eyes in a mournful grimace.

"Positively blinding," she said, and offered me scrambled eggs and coffee.

"Don't worry. You won't have to endure it long. I'll go elsewhere after I'm done eating."

"Don't be dramatic. I can endure a little brightness for your company."

I smiled, grateful for her words, but still ate quickly.

I thought about telling her what Emet-Selch had said, since I'd shared more with her about him than I had with anyone, but some part of me felt shy, embarrassed. With Ryne present, it was impossible for me to work up a good reason to share my thoughts.

Breakfast done, I walked. Each time I passed by a citizen of the Crystarium going about their business, my heart twisted at the unspeakable danger I posed, of which they were blissfully unaware. I saw the pangs of sorrow in their eyes when they glanced up at the Lightened sky, and I knew that it was my fault. Sometimes, when they turned their eyes on me and waved, I pictured them realizing the truth of the situation, and descending upon me with improvised weapons and all their misery lending them strength. As they beat me down to a bloody pulp, the Light poured out of my body and infected the next hapless innocent, birthing the newest unspeakable horror. It opened its white maw and slavered over the vessels of sweet aether that had begun to flee it in vain.

_ What Vauthry achieved through idleness, you will achieve through despair. _

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to become small as I went.

At Y'shtola's suggestion I wandered to the Cabinet of Curiosity, where Alisaie, Alphinaud, and Urianger were bound to be frantically searching for a way to avert disaster. I found Urianger first, on the lowest floor, tucked away in an alcove with his head bent over an open tome and an uncharacteristically troubled look on his face. He was clearly absorbed in his work; he didn't notice at first when I sat across from him. When he looked up at me, his eyes were clouded with conflict and regret.

"Why?" I asked him. "I saw it from the Echo. Now I want to hear it from you. Why?"

He closed his eyes. "G'raha Tia devised the deception because he knew that thou wouldst better countenance the loss of a supposed enemy, a deceiver, than a friend," he said quietly. "I agreed to be his accomplice in this because I agreed with him."

He sighed deeply. "Yet now our plans lieth in tatters, and thou art in mortal danger along with both our stars. We were outmaneuvered in a single stroke. I have erred in spectacular fashion." He looked me in the eye. "I am sorry, and expect - nay, deserve - no forgiveness."

I gazed at him sadly. Of course I could see why they had put this farce together. I  _ would _ have tried to stop G'raha from sacrificing himself. We all would have been distracted trying to find a way around that outcome instead of performing the worlds-saving tasks that we were meant to.

"Do you still have the auracite?" I asked. "Could I perhaps channel the Light into it? Could we then use it to…" I swallowed unexpectedly. "...kill Emet-Selch?"

Urianger's eyes narrowed. "Thou hast affection for him," he noted - not accusingly, but simply stating an observed fact. "His betrayal doubtless weigheth heavy on thee."

"Can you even call it a betrayal?" I countered, recalling the conversations I'd already had with myself on this very subject. "He might have told us the truth and aided us, but he had his aims from the very beginning. I knew this was coming. I'm no fool." I sighed. "Or perhaps I am, for letting him close anyway."

Urianger's look was distant. "'Tis not a fool who loves one vastly different from oneself. The only fool is the one who denies it."

I was doubtless as to who came to his mind with those words.

"To answer thy question, no," he said at length. "The auracite functions not to thy specifications. Even were it to hold the Light, thou carriest far beyond its capacity. 'Twould serve only to give thee the slightest relief."

I could not hide my disappointment. "Pray, allow us time," said Urianger with a smile. "We shall find thee a cure, and us a solution."

I stood with a sigh. "Time is a luxury and we are destitute," I said. I looked at my hand. At the center of the white vignette that was my vision, my skin blazed and burst with energy, such that it was a wonder that I was not a spectacle that attracted every eye. "You said it yourself - we were outmaneuvered. I have but one action left to me."

_ My hope is gone. My duty is all that is left. _

I turned, ignoring Urianger's calls, and headed off to the Launch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one, and the next one, are pretty short because I decline to re-write most cutscenes and they each lead directly into one.


	6. An Interlude with Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party explores Amaurot. After a conversation with the specter Hythlodaeus, Emet-Selch appears to the Warrior of Light one last time.

I turned and beheld that Hythlodaeus was gone.

Ardbert and I exchanged a glance, and then he, too, vanished, though I suspected that he yet remained at my side, as always. Folding the paper I had been given and tucking it away, I exited the building in a daze.

I felt no surprise to see Emet-Selch standing outside, waiting for me. I stopped well away from him and studied him. The set of his shoulders was drooping, as always, though his presence seemed imposing somehow despite this. For a moment he regarded me with a cryptic expression, then he finally sighed and strolled over to me, closing the gap that I would not.

"You came," he said with interest. As was his habit, he reached out and took my chin in his hand, and lifted my face slightly to study me. Only a small part of me stirred in response.

"You do not appear mad, yet," he continued. "But the Light inside you twists and burns so brightly. You are spending borrowed time."

I said nothing. He would get to the point of his own accord soon enough, I knew.

He let his hand drop. "Come," he said, and turned and walked away. For a moment I debated whether or not I should follow. Then my first step after him was like wading through mud.

He led me through the streets of Amaurot in silence, his posture slouched and heavy. As he passed by the conjured apparitions of his fellow citizens, some bowed or nodded to him with familiarity. I wondered if they had shown him such respect in his time, or if this was some effect of his wishes and nostalgia today, twisted and colored by memories made eons ago.

We approached a tall building with a lighter facade. The looming double doors opened into a bright hallway, luxurious but homey with light colored walls and a muted golden carpet lain upon white marble that ran its length. Lamps burned without the tell-tale flickering of flame on the walls. Emet-Selch went to a closed door and pushed a button on the panel nearby, and a middling tone rang out as two doors parted to reveal a small room inside. It was another elevator. He looked to me expectantly, and I entered first, turning to face him. He came to stand next to me and pressed a glyphed button on the wall, and the doors slid shut. The floor lurched slightly as the lift began to rise soundlessly.

We said nothing through the trip. My heart was closed, and I had little to say.

I began to wonder when it would stop just as I felt our momentum begin to slow. The elevator aligned with its target floor and the doors opened with the same middling tone as before. Emet-Selch stepped out and I followed.

We had emerged into another hallway, though this had only four doors, one at each corner. Emet-Selch went to the first door on the left, which emitted a quiet chime, and pushed it open. I followed closely behind.

I stepped into a wide room with dark walls and dark furnishings. Though I could sense the luxury inherent in each item, the space was plainly arranged for comfort and study. A cozy desk strewn with papers, upon which I glimpsed sketches of architectural facades and structures, rested in the corner, overseen by a curving lamp. A strange kitchen with humble miscellany carved its niche out of a quarter of the room. There was a low-set coffee table and plush seating arrayed around it. In the middle of the area a table sat, and a scale model of Amaurot stood resplendent upon it, highlighted by a light overhead. All this was accented with myriad objects and artifacts taking tasteful and deliberate places among the furniture, including an instrument that I had never seen before, though it looked quite similar to a harpsichord.

"Your apartment," I said.

"Obviously," Emet-Selch rejoined. He walked through it and went to the far wall, where stained glass windows and doors peered onto a wide balcony. I stayed a moment to take it all in, then followed him outside.

The balcony was decorated with plants that had been selected for their modest size and extravagant features. They parted way halfway across, leaving clearance for visitors to lean against the railing and take in the city below. We went there, the both of us gazing down on his creation. I wondered if I might see one of the others exploring.

"Such a pity," said Emet-Selch.

"'For eons I wondered what had become of you,'" I said, repeating his words from the Crystarium back to him. He turned and looked at me in surprise.

"My, my," he said, "how is it that you were listening when I put you to sleep?"

"There are things in this world of which even you are not aware," I replied smoothly.

"Secrets!" He scoffed. "Well, if you have secrets up your sleeve that might help you, then I genuinely suggest that you avail yourself of them soon. You don't have very long."

"What did you mean when you said that?" I said, demanding.

"You don't know?" Emet-Selch looked down and fiddled with his gloves with a smug look on his face. "Hm. Why should I tell you? Forgetting is a blessing; remembering is a burden. Why should I relieve you of the one blessing that remains to you in your final hour? What kind of cruel monster would that make me?" He turned his eye on me, and I scowled.

A grave silence passed between us. The grin slowly faded from Emet-Selch's face and my expression softened until we were both neutral in the stillness.

"I was someone you were fond of, wasn't I?" I asked slowly. "Hythlodaeus implied as much."

Emet-Selch looked out over his city, staring deeply into a different age, a different life.

"I loved you," he said softly.

My heart twisted. A dozen emotions flitted through my breast. I knew he was telling the truth. He reached out and took my hand.

"We used to stand on this balcony together, holding hands. We joined our souls and meditated as one until we achieved perfect equilibrium. Then we went inside… and made love until we were spent completely."

Slowly, he lifted my hand to his cheek. His expression was sad and wistful. Something deep inside me stirred, and tears crept into my eyes.

"Do you remember?" he asked. There was a glimmer of hope in his voice, a faint but desperate plea.

One tear spilled over and slid down my face. "No," I whispered.

Emet-Selch closed his eyes. We were not connected, but I could feel his light of hope wither and die in darkness. I could feel the sea of loneliness churning, its dangerous currents pulling every emotion down into its depths and pulling and twisting until each one tore apart and was assimilated. I could see the workings of this on his face, as the pain mounted and broke like a wave upon his heart, dousing him with sorrow.

"Broken," he murmured, voice halting. "You are a broken husk." He opened his eyes, and there burned fiery anger, as wide and cruel as the universe. "I should never have hoped."

He released my hand and I reclaimed it at my side, trembling. "I had aimed to comfort you," he went on, "but now I know that you would not accept it. Our final meeting draws near." He gestured dismissively, turning to grip the handrail and gaze over the city. "Your friends are waiting for you. Go to them."

"Emet-Selch-"

_ "Leave me." _

I gave a start at the vehemence in his voice. Then my heart began to finally harden, at long last. Without another word, I turned and left the apartment, and began to make my way back to the others.

I held my head higher as I passed through the alleyways and streets, under the light of those many illuminated windows and the oceanic sky towering overhead, and the goal in my heart - my duty - slowly crept to the front of my resolve and made its home there. I steeled myself for the confrontation to come until regret and sorrow were safely locked away behind the darkness of my strength.

I walked with confidence toward doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what's coming.


	7. Shadowbringers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle looms, crashes, and burns the heart.

How interesting that I had begun my mission to save the First by shifting the balance until Light's supremacy was in doubt, and now I was ending it by reasserting its power. The Light surged and burned within me, brighter than the rays of the sun, yet I was in complete control as I readied my final blow. How terrible that I might achieve this in so desperate an hour, when if only I had been able to control the Light before, we might have seen a different outcome. If only, if only, if only.

Yet for all my wishes I felt no doubts. The urgency of battle, the life-and-death struggle, reigned in my heart. Ardbert's axe of Light blazed in my hand. Confident and heedless of the encroaching darkness as the eldritch horror that Emet-Selch had become surged closer, I looked into the tortured eye of the red curving mask at its face and knew nothing but the impending clash. 

The darkness enveloped all. The air grew still as death.

He was upon me.

I swung the axe with all my might.

Power surged out of me and my vision became only the struggle against blackest black and whitest white, shuddering and shoving back and forth, struggling, two longings and perspectives irreversibly pitted against one another in this tiny reality where only one could remain. Our powers raged down to the primordial. The struggle enveloped my world until nothing remained.

Then, in a burst and rush of Light that stole my breath away, I triumphed.

The Light went straight through the darkness and crashed into a wall, and the black world around us began to bleed into gray, then into yellows and oranges and blues, until the ruined Amaurotian landscape surrounding the platform on which we stood crawled into focus and the sun peered out overhead, bathing the world in light. The darkness receded into the figure that stood before me.

It did not touch the glittering hole that gaped through his body.

I could not see his face under the hood of his Ascian robes. As if in disbelief, Emet-Selch - no, his name was Hades - hovered his hand over the wound that I had rent through him. Seeing it, my breath caught in my chest.

He let his hand drop, then slowly pulled the hood back from his head. He turned his face upward, toward the sky, like a man that had just emerged from a cramped cave into fresh air. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.

"Hades," I tried to say, but only my lips formed the words. There was a lump in my throat, constricting, and I could not speak.

Hades gazed intently upon me.

"Remember… remember us," he said. His voice was low and resigned and earnest. "Remember that we once lived."

I could not stop the tears from flowing. The lump in my throat shattered into an exhaled sob, and words were impossible. I nodded, hoping that it would suffice. It seemed to.

He smiled.

His smile was so gentle and sad, the first and last of its kind. 

"Remember me," he said, his voice soft and private, the words meant only for me.

I wanted to run to him, touch him, connect us, feel his final emotions and commit them to my soul, but I stood rooted in place, assailed by grief. I watched unblinking through my tears as light faded into being and softly embraced him, and he dissolved into motes of glimmering darkness and light that floated into the air, free and unburdened by the thoughts and prayers of the past. One by one they vanished, until finally Hades was gone.

I wanted to scream.

Instead I discreetly wiped away my tears and tried to compose myself. My comrades gathered around me, remarking upon my victory and my restored aether. Ryne asked me a question, but I had to ask her to repeat herself.

"How did you finally control the Light?" she asked.

I glanced behind me, to where Ardbert's axe was embedded in the platform and had begun to fade away. When it was gone, I turned back toward my friends. "I'll tell you some other time," I said quietly.

Judging by the looks on their faces, they were not satisfied with this answer.

I glimpsed just the haggard Miqo'te I had wanted to see approaching the rear of the group. G'raha Tia limped up to us, his eyes furtive and avoidant. He gave some nonsense about apologies, but seeing as I had already forgiven him, I simply smiled as well as I could and said, "'Tis good to see you awake, G'raha Tia."

At this his eyes widened, and his lower lip trembled with emotion until he was forced to hide his tears away in his forearm. I went to him and hugged him. 

"Oh, don't cry," I said, "I'm already crying and I don't want any more tears. Don't cry, Raha."

_ "Raha!" _ he repeated in disbelief, choking on the informal use of his true name. He wept a little more on my shoulder, until at last he regained control of himself and gently pulled away.

"'Tis good to be awake," he rejoined, blinking away tears.

Thancred stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulder, and this gesture spurred us all to turn and begin the long journey home.

* * *

I donned my victory mask as we reentered the Crystarium to cheers and smiles abound.

My victory mask was merely the fake face I put on for others after I was done with a terrible battle, when I wanted nothing more than to rest and ruminate on the events in which I had played a part. My smile was terribly convincing, and I was armed with quips and short expressions of thanks and responses to every witticism thrown my way. I had to dodge crowds and make sure that I wasn't jostled and thrown aloft by celebratory strongmen. I had to leave every grateful well-wisher satisfied with my reply without being swept up into a twenty minute conversation. I had to promise to share a drink with a dozen different people, always on their coin. I had to accept the occasional impromptu gift. I had to offer words of wisdom to children who ran up to me asking if I was really the Warrior of Light or Warrior of Darkness or Eikon-Slayer or Wyrmslayer or what have you, and how did I get so strong, can they grow up and be a great adventurer like me someday? 

Really, it was always like engaging in a battle directly following the conflict that I had just won; I had to fight tooth and nail to play the part of the gracious hero that I only wished to let drop for just a little while.

I could barely do it this time. My smile faltered, my quips came slow. My thank-yous and glad-to-helps were rote repetitions, like I was an actor that had grown bored with her role while on stage. I tried. I really, really tried.

But I had never had to don the mask after killing someone I had grown to care about.

I ended up retiring earlier than was proper, without telling anyone. I fled at a brisk walk to the Pendants, and once I was in my chambers, I took two steps forward before I fell to the floor and cried.

My keening was animalistic and shrill and I could not temper it for all the will in the world. A hollowness bore a hole through me like the hole I had torn through him. It wrenched my insides, and I was raw with despair that I could not justify, which pained me all the further. My tears puddled on the tile beneath me.

The doors to my chambers opened behind me, and I looked up and glanced back. Y'shtola stepped inside and shut the doors quietly behind her. I closed my eyes and turned away, too ashamed to compose myself.

"Stand," she said softly as she approached me. I obeyed without thought. She began to methodically strip me of my fighting gear. I felt her deft fingers take note of tears and stains as she worked. I lifted my arms in compliance to allow her to pull my shirt over my head, and I swallowed some small embarrassment as she slipped my pants and underwear from my hips and guided me to step out of the puddle of fabric they made. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I heard her boots echo on the tile as she stepped away.

She returned with fresh sleeping clothes, and helped me don them with utter patience. When I was finally dressed again, she hooked her arm around me and placed her hand on my shoulder, and led me to the bed, helping me to settle under the sheets.

"Rest," she said. She reached out and gripped my forearm reassuringly, then turned and left my chambers. I could hear faint echoes of the celebratory mood outside in the silence left in her wake, and little by little I was lured into sleep.

* * *

The pain of grief is different for each individual that suffers it. Sometimes it is a constant aching that only abates with sufficient distraction; alternately it can strike in moments when the loss is felt most keenly. The spectrum of grief is as wide as existence, as variable as all the shades of happiness that have ever blossomed in the breasts of men.

Being who I am, I had met with grief many times. I was familiar with my particular flavor of suffering. Yet nothing might have prepared me for enduring a loss at my own hand.

Haurchefant had died defending me. The voice of guilt, full of vitriol, often argued that it had been my fault, but the truth was that I had not killed him. The same of Ysale, and Papalymo; each had died in defense of the realm, and not at my hand, nor for my lack of interference. I had cared for all of them, and they had all died at the hands of another.

'Twas I who had struck the final blow this time, and my heart could not find comfort in such truths as  _ he was going to kill you  _ and  _ he hurt your friends and would have destroyed the world. _ I had… loved him, somehow, and I had killed him. And if only, if only,  _ if only _ I had not had to.

I woke to such laments the next morning - though, judging by the angle of the sun through the window, it was closer to midday. My entire body was stiff and sore. I lay there staring at the ceiling for what must have been a quarter hour, until suddenly the doors to my chambers opened. I sat up with a groan and beheld Y'shtola bringing a covered tray to the table.

"You're awake," she noted as she set it down. "Come - you should eat."

I threw off the covers and rotated my body to place my feet on the floor, then stood and greeted a world of dizziness. I clutched my head with one hand and adopted a steady stance.

"Gods," I muttered.

"You were under a great amount of strain during your battle. You housed enough aether to shatter your soul, and suddenly relieved yourself of it. Now is the time to rest and take care of yourself as your body recovers." I went to her and sat, and she sat across from me and uncovered the tray to reveal an omelette and two cups of coffee, one light with milk and sugar and the other black as soil. I took the lighter, and Y'shtola availed herself of the other. "The others have already agreed to take turns badgering you and making sure you eat well," she informed me with some amusement.

In another time I might have offered banter in response, but nothing came to me today. I sipped the coffee. It was just the right temperature. I picked up the fork and forced myself to take the first bite.

"Do you regret killing him?" she asked gently.

Gods, it was too early in the morning to confront this. Though, hadn't I been torturing myself in bed moments before she'd come? I swallowed hard.

"No," I replied. "I only…" I swallowed again, fighting a lump. "I only wish that there had been another way."

Y'shtola remained silent, but the conversation played itself out in my head anyway.  _ There was no other way; he was an undeniable threat to both our stars. I know, but might we not have somehow come to an understanding? No, do not forget that he was tempered, and compelled to act in service to his god. I know. I only wish… _ and so on, and so on. The back and forth was a cacophony in comparison to the silence Y'shtola blessed me with as I ate. I rediscovered hunger, and summarily devoured the omelette, then leaned back to sip my coffee.

"I hope that you do not regret your affection for him," said Y'shtola at one point, and I eyed her curiously. "Do you?" 

I stared into the light brown liquid in my cup. "I don't know." Furtively I flicked my gaze up at her. "Should I?" 

"That, I cannot decide for you. Though I might offer my opinion, and my opinion is thus…" She paused to take a sip of her coffee. "Take what happiness you can find whenever you can find it. Treasure the memories you made. In time, the grief will soften."

Tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. I turned my head away to hide my twisting expression from my friend.

"It's alright," she said, her voice full of sympathy, and the floodgates opened. She stood and made her way around the table to me, and put her arms around me. 

Perhaps a few minutes later I was finally able to stop crying. Y'shtola straightened and withdrew, and I looked up at her.

"Thank you," I said with a sniff. "I feel so stupid for acting this way about the death of an enemy."

"He might have been your enemy, but for a time, he was your friend."

"More," I said without thinking. "He was more."

Y'shtola put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I smiled sadly up at her.

"We hope to see you out and about in the Crystarium today, but if not, then rest well," she said, going to the door. "I'll tell the others how you're doing." I nodded, and waved as she left.

Belatedly, I called out "Thanks for breakfast!" after her.

I sat for a long time looking at my empty plate. My thoughts wandered in sad circles. The coffee began to grow cold, and I gulped down the rest of it before it could become repulsive. Part of me wanted to return to bed, but another part of me felt a strange drive to go somewhere. It took forever for me to realize where that somewhere was. When I did, I stood up with a start, staring off into the distance, plans coming rapidly together in my head.

I dressed quickly. I donned some of my fighting gear and made sure I could call my weapon from the aether. I doubted that I would encounter any danger, but I had a mind to be cautious.

I went to the Wandering Stairs and procured some bread and cheese, which I stowed away. Several people recognized me and tried to pull me into an early afternoon drink, but I excused myself with assurances that I was busy and needed to be somewhere. The general consensus was that I was too hardworking and needed to relax.

Would that they only knew.

My next stop was the Crystalline Mean, where I discreetly purchased a hardy-looking leather-bound journal and a remarkable replica of an Allagan artifact: a pen which had its own store of ink carried inside it. The crafter in me was fascinated and wished dearly to study the original, that I might produce a better version and bring it back to the Source.

All this done, I called upon my powers and fixed my destination in mind, then flung myself through the Lifestream in teleportation.

As I vanished, a small figure peering around the corner to watch me witnessed my disappearance, took a guess, waited a few moments, then disappeared themselves.

* * *

I reappeared in the Tempest, in the city that Hades had conjured. The coolness of the ocean air prickled my skin as it settled around me. My eyes adjusted slowly to the blues and blacks of my surroundings. I looked around and spotted a tall Amaurotine specter, who in turn spotted me and greeted me in the soothing song of their language. I smiled and nodded in response; it was only the reconstituted spirit of a being long dead, but I couldn't bring myself to be rude.

I started off in a vague direction, not knowing where exactly my destination lay in relation to the aetheryte. This occurring to me, I stopped and turned around, and headed instead toward the building in which I had spoken with Hythlodaeus. In the back of my mind I hoped that I might find him again, but I knew that I wouldn't. Besides, he wasn't what I sought.

After a few moments of walking, I started to hear what I thought were the echoes of footsteps lighter than my own. I stopped, and there was no delay in them stopping with me, so I shrugged it off as my imagination and continued onward.

But in the oppressive silence of the city I heard it again, and it was too distinct to ignore; I whipped around, scanning the path behind me.

"Who's there?" I demanded. "Show yourself."

Silence answered me. Then, just as I had begun to draw the conclusion that I had been hearing things, a small figure dressed in white stepped out from behind the railing at a corner and approached me.

"Ryne?" I said curiously when I recognized her. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw you leave, and decided to follow you," she answered, stopping near me with her hands folded behind her back and a shy expression on her face. "When you left without telling anyone… I know you're hurting, and I… I didn't want you to be alone."

My heart melted in warmth. "Oh, Ryne."

She smiled. "Thancred doesn't know that I'm here. He was busy teaching some guard who has a crush on Lyna how to play a card game, as a way for him to break the ice with her, so I was able to sneak off. Please don't tell him."

"Thancred doesn't have to know," I assured her. Her smile brightened.

"So…" She scanned the surroundings slowly, turning about. "Why did you come here?"

I gazed toward the towering building that was my destination. "Trying to find something," I said at length. "Do you want to come with me?" 

She nodded. "I'd be glad to."

We set off.

When we arrived at the building, I turned around and faced away from it, trying to imagine the path that Hades had led me on from its starting point. Ryne was perfectly patient, and did not ask what I was doing or why we were suddenly walking away from what we had been previously walking toward.

From there I let instinct blend with memory to lead me. I took turns based on feeling when my memory pulled me in a direction; I imagined following him again, and followed where he went in my mind's eye.

I knew that we had arrived when I recognized the structure with a lighter facade than the rest. "We're here," I said softly, my courage abruptly draining. I stopped.

Ryne stopped next to me, looking up at me and at the building in turns. "Is something wrong?" she asked, and her innocent voice shook me out of my hesitation. I made a negative noise and continued on.

The enchantments had not faded one ilm. The elevator was still where I remembered it. I pressed the button and the doors opened, and I stepped inside. "A lift," I explained to Ryne as she followed.

"I've never seen a lift like this before," she said.

I remembered which button Hades had pressed because it had been on the top row. We rode upward, and departed at the top floor, or near enough to it.

The door to Hades' apartment stood wide open. The sight made me hesitate again. Ryne bravely went ahead of me and peered inside. "Where are we?" she wondered aloud.

"His apartment," I answered, willing myself to follow. "Emet-Selch's. He showed me this place before we all met up at the convocation."

"Why would he show you this?"

"I don't know."

Inside was as I remembered it, and showed no signs of disturbance. I stood at the threshold, surveying it from one end to the other. Ryne flitted from place to place, examining everything she came across. She came to the instrument not unlike a harpsichord and tickled one of its keys; the sound that emerged was very unlike a harpsichord, but no less beautiful.

"There's a note here," she said of the coffee table. She picked it up and returned to me, and handed it over. I took it gingerly and turned it right side up to read.

There were seven strange words upon it, and they sent a chill running through me.

_ Your apartment was right next to mine. _


	8. Lavender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warrior of Light listens to revelations about her past with Hades, and makes a decision about where to go from there.

The letter was so bewilderingly succinct and simple that I could not help but wonder what in the world it meant. Ryne expressed the same confusion, peering over my hand at the parchment.

Suddenly there was a curious sound like the rustling of leaves in a breeze out in the hallway, and we both turned our heads toward the noise. Ryne darted away and stole a glance outside. "Look!" she called to me, and I went to her, leaning out of the threshold to see what had changed.

Where once the carpet had been clean and plain before, now there lay a path of tiny purple petals and green stems leading right up to the adjacent door on the same wall at the far end of the hallway. I stepped past Ryne and made to put the paper away, but it had vanished from my hand. Blinking, I bent down and pinched some of the purple petals in my fingers, then brought them up to my nose and inhaled their scent.

"Lavender," I murmured with wonder.

Ryne ran past me and to the indicated door, which stood open as Hades' had when we had arrived. She didn't even have to step inside to be taken aback.

"Wow," she whispered, looking back at me with an expression that begged me to move faster and join her. I found myself briefly entering into a jog in response.

Inside…

My jaw dropped.

"Look at this," Ryne breathed as she stepped inside, entering into what could be described as no less than an orderly and beautiful jungle.

Where Hades' ceiling had been low and cozy, this apartment's - _my_ apartment - loomed high above, lit by a strong lantern that seemed to be made of curling wood and a facsimile of glowing yellow fruit as lanterns. There were plants _everywhere,_ resplendent in every shape and size and color. Leaves in all the shades of spring ringed the walls, shading smaller neighbors that emerged from pots with whimsical designs painted upon them. Vines of every type that one could imagine sprung from support poles and boasted sprigs of strangely shaped berries and fruits, as did their bushy adjacents, and in one corner stood a tree with a twisting trunk that stretched its branches shelteringly over a coffee table and cushioned seats; some of them dipped low over the table, offering succulent multicolored fruits for visitors to enjoy. A lovingly carved tribute to the splendor of nature in the form of a lamp sat at the center of the table, almost cradling one of the drooping branches and its fruit. 

The kitchen was stocked from end to end with tiny pots from which fresh herbs and botanical spices grew in perfect balance. Nearby, a shelf reaching almost to the ceiling was full to bursting with what I supposed were the bounties of the household, placed lovingly in glass jars and woven wooden baskets. There was no ladder nearby to fetch from the higher portions, but I supposed that one might have simply conjured a hand to take what one needed, or called it down directly.

The furnishings almost seemed to have been grown into existence rather than assembled or carved; the chairs looked as if thick tree roots had been coaxed into their shape. A desk in the corner looked the same way, and though the smooth wooden surface could not have been born of a single root, it too seemed to have been made from one organism's growth. I could not imagine how these things had been fashioned, but there was likely so much about creation magic that I did not understand.

And would never understand, now that the one person who had been willing and able to tell me about it was gone.

I brushed away a tear and focused instead on a pot of lavender. There were more than a few of them situated about the apartment, where superfluous decorations might have sat instead. They defined the scent of the space, though not in an overbearing way. In fact, it was quite pleasant.

On the aforementioned desk there was a strange device which I immediately recognized as being Allagan in design. It stood out starkly against the humble, natural designs of the apartment.

"Do you think I can eat one of these?" Ryne asked, pointing at the fruits of the tree.

"I don't see why not," I replied, "but if you start feeling sick, stop eating right away."

"Of course!" She flitted over to the hanging branches and began to separate one of the fruits from its home.

I approached the Allagan device with a sense of foreboding that I couldn't explain. It was a small box, with a square button on top and a little screen beside it, and a lens on the side that faced me. Giving it little more thought, I pressed the button.

The lens brightened, and I abruptly realized that I was standing _inside_ a projection; I leapt back with a startled noise. Then my eyes locked on the illusion and my heart skipped a beat.

Hades stood bent over the desk, his hand on the device. He had just pressed the button to record, I realized. A few seconds passed, and then he suddenly turned around with a flourish.

"If you are seeing this, then it means I have perished," he said with casual venom. "I have repeated Lahabrea's crowning act of idiocy. Glory be."

"Emet-Selch!" cried Ryne with a mouthful of fruit, and I shook my head at her and explained that it was a projection coming from the device on the table.

"Of course, that's not going to happen," he went on while I spoke. "When I triumph, I'll come back and destroy this recording and go on as if I never made it. But for the time being, let's pretend. Let's pretend you beat me." He leaned back against the table and smiled cruelly. "Let's see if I can't try to relieve you of that blessing of yours one last time."

In spite of what he was saying, my heart twisted and tears crept into my eyes at seeing him and hearing his voice, which I had resolved to never hear again.

He continued. "In case the evidence of your eyes has not made it to your brain, I'll say it aloud: you loved plants." He gestured limply at the room. "You loved to create them, experiment with how they might grow once you set them loose, and influence their growth through means that you kept close to your heart. You created many different fruits and berries and herbs and spices. You created ingredients in concoctions that, when consumed, aided concentration or sped along healing. You created fruits that appealed to the tastes of even the pickiest eaters. But what popularized you, what made your name pass over the lips of every Amaurotine, were your scents."

I stepped out of the way as he crossed the room to a pot of luscious pink flowers that reached upward in a beautiful cacophony of color. He stooped over these, inhaling in a way that I suspected was not merely theatrical.

"They burned your incense in the debate halls to encourage clearheadedness and calm, that logic might dominate above all. Restaurants and cafés boasted of your flowers as part of their relaxed atmospheres. Individuals wore your light but luxurious perfumes to stimulate the senses and appetites of the one they loved." 

He straightened and turned back to the room at large. His look was soft and nostalgic. "Forgive this departure, almost a non-sequitur, but I must say it again: I loved you." He lowered his voice. "I loved you."

I shut my eyes against the tears until they stopped their threatening loom.

"We started out as acquaintances," he said. "Peers at the Akademia. You flourished in your work and I did mine, and we saw one another occasionally. But I learned of your kindheartedness and the intensity with which you cared about your noble goals - traits you share with your current form - and I grew to admire you from afar. At the time, I had not the courage to approach you. It was another admirer that spurred me to action.

You were well loved in Amaurot, you see. One day you completed one of your first famous installations at a well-known restaurant, and the very next day a popular publication produced a review of what you had done. The writer spent most of his word count fawning over you under the thin guise of praising your work. 'The very air is a pleasure to breathe under the influence of her beauty,' he said."

Hades gazed into the distance with a grim smile. "It infuriated me. I sought you out in a storm of jealous fury and found you alone, reading the very words which had incensed me, with your hand on your lips and a blush peeking out from under your mask. My resolve reached a fiery pitch; I went to you and confessed all. And do you know what you did?"

He paused, then frowned. "I expect not. Nor do I expect that you might remember the significance of it. You smiled at me, and took off your mask."

He lifted his hands and glared passionately down at them. "I still remember the moment I first beheld your beautiful eyes, accompanied by your tender smile. Thinking of that moment, I…" He shook his head. "Then I removed my mask. I remember I was trembling as I did it. And you kissed me. You chose me."

My heart swayed deeply at this. A blush climbed my neck and claimed my cheeks. Ryne had stopped eating her fruit, and was staring at me with wide eyes. "What?" I asked. 

"Nothing!" she said, dropping her gaze. "That's just - that's very romantic. I imagine it's very significant for one of their kind to remove their mask."

I wanted to confirm it for her, but Hades had been right; I still didn't remember any of it.

"But why is he talking about you as if… as if you were…" She struggled to find the words.

"Alive, back then?" I offered. "Because, apparently… I was. His kind might be my kind."

Ryne fell silent to ponder the implications of this, as did I.

Meanwhile, the projection of Hades had closed his eyes and folded his arms, but that had slowly transitioned into wrapping them around himself.

"I have never forgotten the time we spent together," he said softly. "The things we created. On my balcony there is a plant called the Lover's Bloom. A creation of yours, dedicated to me. Each time the people attuned to it make love, a flower blossoms. It was a wildly popular creation." His lips twitched at a sad smile. "I might have recognized you sooner, had I noticed the flower that had bloomed the first night we were together in your present form. Alas, I only noticed after a dozen blooms had joined it, and by then I knew it was you."

I blushed, remembering the day we had spent together.

"Do you remember how you revealed it to me? You took me to my own apartment, teasing a surprise, then when we got there you dragged me out onto the balcony. I didn't notice there was a new plant, because you immediately started to disrobe me. Ah, your hands…"

He started to descend into a graphic description of our escapades, and I ran over to Ryne and clapped my hands over her ears. She swallowed another mouthful of fruit and batted my hands away indignantly, declaring, "I know about sex!"

"Even so!" I replied, blushing heavily.

"It's fine!" she took another bite and ducked away from my censoring hands with a rogue's agility.

Thankfully Hades finished waxing nostalgia quickly afterward. "You turned my head until I saw the flower blooming. Oh, the love you inspired in me…" One of his hands alighted on his breast, and his gaze turned from nostalgia to despair. "Why is it that you opposed me in those final days, as our world turned to ruin? Why did your love not endear you to my side?" 

"Why did _your_ love not endear you to _my_ side?" I countered suddenly. I gave a start; those words had come unbidden from somewhere deep inside me.

"I spent eons wondering what I might have said or done to change your mind," Hades went on. "How desperately I wished that things had been different. How desperately I wished that I had not lost you. And now I am losing you again."

He turned away, hand dropping. "Yes, I admit it: I love you still. I love you even as you are now, even though you are only fragments of what you were. If only you had seen sense and joined me when we had our second chance. But you are too similar to the way you were, and indeed, that is why I feel the way I do."

His shoulders dipped in a slouch. "Oh, fate is cruel." He straightened animatedly. "But! We were pretending that I was defeated, were we not? So, what shall my final message to my triumphant adversary be?"

Turning and crossing the room back to the desk, he turned and leaned back against it again, and settled there with a pondering look on his face. Finally, he spoke again.

"I suppose I only want you to know that I loved you, since it is beyond your capacity to remember. And if anything I said did inspire a memory, I ask that you keep it close to your heart, as I did." He grinned in his sultry way. "Goodbye, _hero_. May you ever walk in the light of your precious crystal." He turned and put his hand upon the device, and the projection vanished, filling the room with silence.

Tears spilled unbidden from my eyes in tiny rivers. I trembled with the effort of containing the sobs that wanted to break loose. I felt a small hand on my arm, and turned my face away from the friend who wanted to comfort me, unwilling to put my weakness on display.

"You loved him too, didn't you?" Ryne asked softly.

"Perhaps," I whimpered. Ryne's hand squeezed my arm.

Then she began to pull me toward the coffee table. "Come on, you should try one of these fruits. They're very good!"

Heartbroken though I was, I was indeed curious to sample one of my own creations. Ryne drew her dagger and sliced one of the fruits from its branch with a flourish, catching it just before it hit the floor. She pulled me into one of the seats and sat next to me, then pushed the fruit into my hands. "Go on," she urged. "The skin's sort of like an apple; it doesn't need to be peeled."

I sniffed and swallowed the excess tears in my throat, then lifted the fruit to my teeth and bit down. An explosion of sweetness filled my mouth, accompanied by faint, strange accents of mint and a delayed taste that reminded me of blueberries. The juices were viscous but not sticky, so there was no discomforting film to wipe away after I licked my lips. "It is good," I agreed. Then something occurred to me. "What does it taste like to you?" 

Ryne blinked. "Hm? Well, it sort of reminds me of cherries and oranges."

"I taste blueberries and mint, and something else I can't describe."

"Really? That's so strange!"

I smiled. "I suppose… it simply occurred to me that if I were to make a fruit that everyone liked, I would have it react to the tastes of the person that ate it."

Ryne clapped. "That's brilliant! I bet everyone loved the things you made."

"I'm sure I had my dissenters." I took another bite, chewed savoringly, then swallowed. "Any artist worth their salt always does."

Ryne produced a handkerchief and offered it to me to dry my tears with before they could become sticky and itchy. I accepted and made use of it with full gratefulness. Then she leapt up and cut another fruit from the tree, and we ate together for a time.

"So, you _have_ had the talk?" I asked after a while.

"The talk?"

"About sex, I mean."

"Oh." Ryne looked down with a blush. "I… yes? I know generally what's involved. No one talked to me about it when I was living in Eulmore, and Thancred just asked me if I knew what I needed to know, and I said 'Sort of,' and he said 'Great,' and never spoke of it again."

I slapped my forehead with the flat of my palm. "Oh, dear." Ryne laughed. "Well, if you have any womanly questions, _please_ come to me. Or Y'shtola - I'm sure she'd be happy to tell you whatever you needed to know as well. Don't be shy."

I produced the bread and cheese I'd brought to fill out our lunch.

"So, did you find what you came here for?" Ryne asked when we were finished. After some thought, I nodded.

"I didn't expect to find all this, but…" I blinked away some sudden tears before they could spring forward. "He said that he wanted his kind to be remembered. That's what I intend to do."

"How?"

I pulled the leather-bound journal and pen from their resting place and opened to the first page. "The same way any scholar puts their subject to record. I'll take notes. I'll draw sketches." I looked at Ryne. "This will likely be boring and solitary work. You don't need to stay if you don't want to."

Ryne shook her head. She leaned over and watched me as I began to write.

The next hours were spent thusly so: I took notes on everything I knew of the Ancients, and spent time sketching everything I laid my eyes on, even down to the smallest detail. I wasn't the most proficient artist, but I knew I would be able to rope Alphinaud into assisting me later. My notes, too, were rudimentary, but surely Urianger would aid me in this regard as well. I wrote without care for beauty or grace in style, and drew as well as I could, leaving small descriptions to fill out the gaps in my skill. I filled the pages until I could fill them no longer from my seat in my once-apartment, and then Ryne and I transferred ourselves to Hades' and completed an analysis there. I paid special attention to the instrument. Ryne discovered that the base had a cover that could be lifted and then suspended, and together we gazed upon the workings inside, a maze of wood and strings pulled taut. I tried my best to reproduce it on the journal page, but I knew I would have to drag Alphinaud - and at least one passionate crafter capable of reconstructing it - here later to capture the full details.

We tried to open the other doors in the hallway, but they budged as readily as stone walls; it seemed that I had been the only neighbor whose home Hades had cared to render. Before we left I ducked back into my apartment and retrieved the Allagan device from the desk, stowing it away.

We went out into the city, exploring and taking in the sights through a new lens. Free now from impending doom, I could look upon it all in a more appreciative light, rather than seeing each walkway and building as a potential obstacle or destination. We wandered, stopping occasionally to allow me to sketch our surroundings, the both of us pointing out interesting features to one another and speculating on what we saw. I sketched the room with wide benches in which I'd waited with Hythlodaeus. I caught the attention of a few Amaurotine spirits in the debate hall, who were more than pleased to stand for a portrait. They passionately praised my efforts in their strange, soft voices, then bent low around me and expressed concern over the tears that their praise evoked; I had thought again of Hades and his wish to be remembered.

The day passed quickly in these pursuits. The sunset was undetectable so far beneath the sea, but the coming darkness was not. When our surroundings and the watery sky above began to dim, bringing out the illumination from the windows inside the buildings around us, I knew it was time to leave.

"Shall we go?" I asked Ryne after saying so, and she nodded. I took her hand and we both passed into the aether and back to the Crystarium.

* * *

The aetheryte plaza was abuzz with activity, as always. After we teleported in, I sighed wearily and released Ryne's hand. She turned to me and began to speak, but not before a shout cut her off.

"There you are!" I turned my head to see Alisaie come running. I could tell that she wanted to pounce on me, employing both fists of admonishment and embracing arms of relief. She stopped short instead. "Where have you been?!"

"I -" My throat seized up. I didn't quite know what to say; did I _want_ to tell everyone where I'd been? I hadn't anticipated being caught. I'd hoped to broach the subject on my own time, but it seemed that possibility was rapidly fleeing my reach.

Alisaie put one finger to her ear. "I found her," she said into her linkpearl. "We're at the aetheryte plaza. Yes. Alright." She lowered her hand. "You have a lot of explaining to do," she said to me, "vanishing for half a day and letting us all worry like that. At least you're here in time for dinner. Alphinaud said we might as well all meet at the Wandering Stairs."

I let my gaze drop and followed her like a scolded child.

* * *

Alphinaud headed the council of friends arrayed before me like judges before a criminal, all with stern looks on their faces and stiff postures spelling out their displeasure with me. It was a little odd, situated as we were at a round table in the Wandering Stairs.

Before anyone could begin to admonish me, I produced the journal and tossed it to land in front of Alphinaud. The boy, who had been a moment away from launching into a likely rehearsed speech, closed his mouth and took the journal, opening to the first page.

"What is this?" he asked.

I barely managed to suppress the urge to sigh with relief at the lecture I'd escaped. "Notes and sketches from Amaurot," I replied. "That's where I was today."

"You shouldn't have left without telling anyone," Alphinaud said immediately, though his attention was fixed on my journal, which tempered the lecture. "You had us all very worried." He stopped there, to my second round of relief. No one took up the torch to go after me further, though Thancred leaned down to Ryne and spoke some very stern words, at which she frowned guiltily and nodded. Then he went back to looking over Alphinaud's shoulder like the rest of them.

"These are… well made," Alphinaud said at length as he flipped through the pages. "But why have you made them?"

"Because I needed to," I said without thinking. Then I paused, and really evaluated what I wanted to say. "There's only one full Ascian left, now that Emet-Selch is gone. Only one who remembers what the world was like in the ancient past, who can raise up others who remember. And because his goals involve the destruction of countless lives, we are set to oppose him, and maybe kill him, and in effect also exterminate the entire race." I met each of the Scions' eyes in turn as my intense gaze swept slowly over them. "That doesn't sit right with me. I am loathe to lose the knowledge of the past. You may hate me for this, but I am in full belief that everything that Emet-Selch told us was the truth."

"Doubtless colored by the lens of his perspective, as any account of memory is bound to be," Urianger put in, and I nodded in agreement.

"That's why I need your help. All of you. I need to capture his words, then separate the truth from the nostalgia. I can't do it myself because… because…" My gaze dropped to my lap. "Based on things I've heard, things he said… I think his past is my past as well."

Every look grew concerned at once. "Pray, speak plainly," said Y'shtola. "Explain what you mean."

"There's a lot to tell," I said reluctantly. Then it all began to pour out of me, these burdens of knowledge that I had borne alone this whole time. I told them of Ardbert, and Hythlodaeus, and even of the history between Hades and myself that he had described in the recording - though I summarized this, preferring to leave out the embarrassing intimacies.

"But how can you be certain that this is not a fiction?" Y'shtola asked. "Emet-Selch created the specter of Hythlodaeus; could he not have used this to plant the idea in your head, then expand upon it later?" 

I shook my head. "Call me romantic if you will, but I can feel in my soul that it is true."

Y'shtola nodded. "I think I believe you."

I addressed the group in general. "I want to write down everything he told us, everything he showed us. I want to compile all the knowledge he gave, even though it comes from a single perspective, even though that perspective was of our adversary. Then I want to take this knowledge and entrust it to all the Scions."

This took them aback. "Even the fact that Hydaelyn may very well be a primal?" asked Alisaie, and I nodded.

"Even that."

A silence settled upon us. For a few moments I let my words settle in their heads, then I spoke a few more.

"He wanted to be remembered," I said softly. "Knowing that, I can't wipe him and his kin from the pages of history, or let them fade and be lost. He would have done so with me, but I am better than that." I looked at Alphinaud. "We are better than that."

Alphinaud's gaze withdrew inside himself, as it did whenever he was searching his heart for an answer to a difficult question. When he finally looked back at me and nodded, I smiled gratefully.

"I think this is a noble undertaking, and I should be glad to assist," he declared. The others nodded in agreement. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I fought them back.

"Thank you all," I whispered.

* * *

I was full of good food and feeling a sight better than I had that morning as I climbed the steps to the Crystal Tower. There was still one thing that I had to do, and I wanted to do it before the night was out, while my courage was still lending me the strength.

G'raha Tia turned to face me when I entered the Ocular without knocking. "Ah! What brings the Warrior of Darkness to my humble abode?" His voice was soft and steady. "Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"I have," I said, approaching him. "I just wanted to see you. There's something I'd like to try."

"Oh? What is it?" He leaned back slightly as I got closer to him, as if wanting to step back, but did not.

I had deliberated long and hard with myself on who I wanted to try this with. I had considered Y'shtola, who knew of the concept because I had shared it with her during our heart-to-heart in Kholusia, but something made me fear her possibly knowing my heart, or me knowing hers. She was inscrutable at times, and I wanted to preserve her privacy and my image of her in turn. I had briefly thought of Ryne, but it would be inappropriate to connect so intimately with someone so young, platonic or not. Thancred was right out, as he couldn't even grapple with his own emotions, let alone someone else's. Urianger was a good candidate but often held himself separate from me, and I had no desire to break down that wall. That left Alphinaud and Alisaie, and I was afraid to change their image of me by exposing myself to them in such a way.

No, there was only one person for whom I could countenance this view of my heart.

"Close your eyes," I said, taking the hand that was still flesh and blood. G'raha blinked rapidly in innocent confusion, then did as I asked. "Now, concentrate…"

I pictured the hand reaching out, reaching away from me, carrying the tether to my soul with it. I imbued the image with my will. It was just as I had done with Emet-Selch.

Moments passed in silence.

"Do you feel anything?" I asked, and G'raha shook his head.

"No," he said. "Should I be? W-what should I be feeling?" 

A lump rose up in my throat. I swallowed harshly and blinked against the tears. When I was in control of myself again, I released his hand.

G'raha opened his eyes. He was blushing. Smiling, I deployed the excuse that I had come up with on the way here.

"I was trying to attune to you," I said, "like an aetheryte."

"Oh!" He burst into adorable laughter that seemed a touch nervous. "I must say, no one has ever tried that before. A novel idea."

I giggled convincingly and waved as I walked to the door. "It was worth a shot. Good night, Raha."

"Yes, to you as well." He turned and wrapped his arms around himself, and I left him.

I walked in a daze to my room in the Pendants. When I stepped through the doors, I was reminded of my arrival on the night of my terrible triumph, when I'd collapsed to the floor and sobbed with anguish. The urge to do so again pulled at me. I slowly got down onto my knees, then shifted to sit on my side. Silent tears spilled down my cheeks as I felt my feelings. I let them fall to the floor.

Here was one more thing I had lost with his death: the ability to connect with someone to the depths of my soul and theirs.

Grief often strikes in the quiet moments when the absence is felt most keenly. It struck me now in the form of loneliness and emptiness. I supposed that this hollow feeling must have been what Hades had felt upon losing his people, losing me. How terrible that our roles should be reversed in such a way. In at least one respect, he had done it; he had relieved me of my blessing.

Yet he had also blessed me with memories and knowledge, and I had already resolved not to let either go to waste. Tomorrow I would drag Alphinaud and Urianger back to Amaurot, and soon I would return to the Source to search for a way to bring my friends back to their home. I could almost feel Hades' amusingly selfish enthusiasm for G'raha's wondrous teleportation magics calling back to me through my memory. 

I knew I had to hold on to things like that; that was how one carried the departed along into the future.

I dressed for bed and crawled under the covers. Soon I slept, and I dreamt of green pasts, of happier times and a happier man, smiling with love, his scent a faint hint of lavender.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the fic for now. I might update and add to it as patches come out and we learn more, or as the fancy takes me, but for now, this is it! Thank you very much for reading.
> 
> I'm debating creating a Crystal Exarch/WoL fic that starts off from an alternate ending to this one (I'm sure you can figure out where that might happen). Let me know what you think.
> 
> And let me know what you thought of the fic in general, too!


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